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Indian TV channels invade Britain

Hasan Suroor

Six years ago, there was only one Indian TV network they could watch. Today, the airwaves are choked with channels targeted at the millionstrong Indian expatriate market.

IF THERE is one thing that Britain's Indian diaspora cannot complain about it is that they do not get enough news from back home, or that there is a dearth of desi TV entertainment.

Six years ago, there was only one Indian TV network, Zee, they could watch. Today, the airwaves are choked with channels targeted at the million-strong Indian expatriate market. There is now a channel in almost every language — Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu. Think of it, and it is there at the click of your remote.

Some languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Bengali boast of more than one channel — and now we have two brand new channels in English as well, both beamed from Delhi.

Typically, however, Doordarshan remains conspicuous by its absence. Not that anyone misses it, but just out of sheer curiosity whatever happened to the much-hyped DD International, which was conceived long before any of the private channels had even come on the scene? Is it still there?

Coming back to the more professional broadcasters, the latest to make its U.K. debut is NDTV in head-to-head competition with the fledgling CNN-IBN channel launched by Rajdeep Sardesai, a former NDTV journalist. Given its pedigree, it is not surprising that CNN-IBN looks rather like an NDTV clone and would need to be more innovative for it to establish a distinct identity of its own.

These two are the only English-language Indian news channels seen in Britain and, according to media watchers, it is going to be an uphill task for them to break into a market hopelessly addicted to mindless family soaps and Bollywood "masala" movies.

An average British Asian viewer — whether Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi — is not greatly interested in rolling news from the subcontinent unless there is a truly huge development such as last year's earthquake in the region. On most days, what they want is entertainment in their own language — more serials, more cinema gossip, more films, and more "live" shows featuring their favourite film stars.

Proof: Star TV. Even after five years, its news and current affairs channel, Star News, is still struggling to gain significant viewers in the U.K. even though it is free. On the other hand, its entertainment arm, Star Plus, is thriving on the back of Hindi serials and Bollywood-centric fare. Similarly, the Zee network owes its viewership and TRPs entirely to its entertainment channels in Hindi, Punjabi, and Gujarati. Its Hindi news bulletin — now replaced by the CNN-IBN news in English — never really took off.

So, how does the future look like for the two new news channels?

So long as the CNN-IBN is part of the Zee package, available free to anyone who subscribes to Zee, it is safe but would people pay to watch it if at some stage Zee were to make it a subscription channel?

There is a big question mark over that considering what happened to Zee's South Asia World channel which had few takers when, after an initial free-run, viewers were asked to subscribe to it.

The same problem confronts NDTV. Currently, it has an advantage over its CNN-IBN rival because it is free-to-air but what if it were to decide to go "pay" — as indeed any commercial venture must eventually. The market buzz is that in order to consolidate it must remain free long enough for it to acquire a sufficiently large dedicated audience. And to achieve that NDTV would need to diversify its fare — maybe even "dumb down," to some extent, to pick up viewership in Southall, Manchester, and Birmingham.

A seasoned media analyst reckons that there is no audience here for an elitist Indian news-and-current affairs channel.

"The English-speaking Indian elite in Britain seldom watches Indian channels. They get their fix from BBC and other western channels. The ones who watch Indian channels are looking for Zee and Star-type entertainment. They are not interested in academic debates," he said.

The lack of interest in Indian news channels has nothing to do with their quality, though it is an issue that needs to be debated separately and at length. In relation to the British-Indian audiences, channels such as Star News, NDTV, and CNN-IBN are simply victims of a market in which current affairs has low priority.

For a TV channel to win over the hearts and wallets of British-Indian expatriates all it needs to do is to be fashionably lowbrow. And do not mention news or current affairs. Meanwhile, as an example of a good English-language south Asian international channel take a look at the Beijing-based CCTV 9. Why can New Delhi not do something like this?

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