ABP News clarifies positioning for UK

ABP News, which re-launched earlier this week on the Sky Digital platform, is currently in a test phase with official programming yet to begin.

The channel was ushered in quickly as a replacement to Sahara One, which closed down after five years in the UK.

Talking exclusively to BizAsia, a spokesperson from ABP News said that the channel was in ‘beta’ stage where the signal is being stabilized. Hence viewers are seeing a difference. The source said most of these differences will go away and some (topical) differences will remain as a news channel has to respond to breaking news where the synchronism with EPG goes.

The channel also said that the UK feed was one hour lagging behind the India feed but will become live within the next couple of months, as there are some “infrastructural investments underway which shall take that much time.”

Commercial fillers such as Star TV schedules are temporary and were used as part of the test phase and will be removed in the next week or so, according to the source.

ABP News will also become BARB rated for official viewing data, to compete directly with Aaj Tak, News18 India, NDTV 24×7 and ZEE News in the UK market.