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HISTORY


Indian television started off in 1959 in New Delhi with tests for educational telecasts.
Indian small screen programming started off in the early 1980s . At that time there was only one national channel Doordarshan , which was government owned. The Ramayana and Mahabharat was the first major television series produced. This serial notched up the world record in viewer ship numbers for a single program. By the late 1980s more and more people started to own television sets. Though there was a single channel, television programming had reached saturation. Hence the government opened up another channel which had part national programming and part regional. This channel was known as DD 2 later DD Metro. Both channels were broadcasted terrestrially.


CABLE TELEVISION

In 1992, the government liberated its markets, opening them up to Cable Television . Five new channels belonging to the Hong Kong based STAR TV gave Indians a fresh breath of life. MTV , Star Plus , BBC , Prime Sports and Chinese Channel were the 5 channels. Zee TV was the first private owned Indian channel to broadcast over cable. A few years later CNN , Discovery Channel , National Geographic Channel made its foray into India. Star expanded its bouquet introducing Star World, Star Sports, ESPN and Star Gold. Regional channels flourished along with a multitude of Hindi channels and a few English channels. By 2001 HBO and History Channel were the other international channels to enter India. By 2001-2003, other international channels such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, VH1, Disney and Toon Disney came into foray. In 2003 news channels started to boom.


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