ZEE to launch Bangla news channel in India

As far as channel wars go, matters have hotted up in the Bengali horizon with the entry of new news channels. The arsenal of war being the ‘dog fight’, every channel is hell-bent on projecting the maximum for themselves and to enter the East India region, especially West Bengal.

A 24 hours Bengali news channel, yet to be named, from the ZEE News stable is scheduled to be launched, according to industry sources, the channel has to receive the uplinking clearance from the I&B Ministry. The launch of the specialised news channel was a natural requirement for the region which was experiencing economic resurgence with significant strides in various sectors like IT, retail, manufacturing and services.

Speaking exclusively to media news website TelevisionPoint, a senior official of ZEE News, says “It’s is true that a new television news channel is planned in Bengali, we are currently willing to try out new tie-ups with other production houses. The ZEE group has a better understanding of the diverse needs of viewers, and consequently, we know that the viewers do spend more time on the Bengali programming, so we have decided to come up with this idea of a Bengali news channel. The parameters are quality and innovation at a trust point. I cannot divulge further information regarding the same at this point.”

For record note, the Bengali news space is extremely cluttered with news channels like STAR Ananda, ETV Bangla News and Tara Newz. STAR Ananda is trying to break in with well-packaged programmes like Hello V.I.P that is believed to be doing well, while on the international front it has tied up with sister network Fox News and APTN-Direct that provides live streaming video images to the channel.