MUMBAI: After acquiring Sab TV, SET-Discovery's One Alliance has made the humour-centric channel a part of the platform's second pay bouquet.

As part of this move, the channel has been shifted to PanAmSat 10, the satellite from which all Sony's channels are broadcast, and is beaming as an encrypted feed. Currently, Sab is also available on its old position at AsiaSat 3 as a free-to-air channel, the dual feed will stop once Sab TV's contract with AsiaSat expires in early June.
 

"Sab TV has already joined the pay bouquet of One Alliance. It will strengthen our second bouquet. The decoder boxes are currently being seeded in the market," says SET India chief operating officer NP Singh.

One Alliance's second bouquet, priced at Rs 38 a month, will have an upward rate revision, says a source. The price is not decided yet but an announcement is expected before May-end. Singh, however, did not wish to comment on whether the rate of the second bouquet will go up.
 
 

One Alliance's second bouquet includes Ten Sports, MTV, Nick, Discovery Travel & Living, Animax and the NDTV channels. It will be up against Zee-Turner's new bouquet of Pogo, HBO, Vh1, Zee Business and Awaaz priced at Rs 25 (retail price to the consumer is Rs 40) and Star India's offerings at Rs 22 for the two Disney channels, Star One and Hungama TV.

Already showing movies on weekends, Sony plans to position Sab TV as a "humour and light entertainment" channel without deviating from its male skew audience base. Reality and game shows are also being lined up, though a complete fix on the channel's programming will be finalised in the next few months.

"We will have a variety of entertainment shows. Our initial programming focus will be on the 8-10 pm band. Gradually, we will expand it to 11 pm," says Singh.