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It‘s May and as reported earlier in Indiantelevision.com‘s special report the Tara Marathi channel has gone on air. This means that there is one more major player in the Marathi regional channel arena other than Zee‘s Alpha Marathi, Prabhat and DD‘s Shayadri.
The Tara (Television Aimed at Regional Audience) group of regional channels is owned by Rathikant Basu promoted Broadcast Worldwide. The channel was officially launched yesterday - 19 May 2000.
The channel boasts of an interesting lineup of programming which will be as diverse as general entertainment, news and current affairs and educational programmes. It has tied up with BBC for educational programming software. The channel claims that it will have a balanced mix of movies and Marathi plays. It has also roped in celebrities like Sachin, Laxmikant Berde, Ashok Saraf and the likes to appear in various programmes on their channel.
Broadcast Worldwide has also initiated a a wide based research programmes for its channels (Read: Broadcast Worldwide initiates broad based research programme). The research which will be done with the help of IMRB is supposed to be first of the kind to be carried out by any channel in India. The main purpose of the research is to understand the viewers aspirations and demands.
The group already has a Bangla channel on air and will be launching a Punjabi and a Gujarati channel soon.
