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MUMBAI: Eenadu Television is taking its Bengali general entertainment
channel pay with effect from 1 February. The other channels
in the network will also go pay in a phased manner.
ETV Bangla will be priced at Rs 10 a month per subscriber.
"Our Bengali channel is going pay from 1 February. The
other channels in the network will follow suit," a senior
ETV executive confirms.
ETV Kannada and ETV Marathi are likely to go pay by March. All
the ETV channels will be priced similarly at Rs 10.
In the Cas (conditional access system) areas of Mumbai and
Kolkata, ETV has not yet decided whether it should stay free-to-air
(FTA). "We haven't taken a call yet whether ETV Bangla
will be FTA in the Cas notified areas of Kolkata. Similarly,
we have to decide about ETV Marathi in the Cas region of Mumbai
when we take the channel pay," the executive said.
Last year ETV had taken its Telugu channels - ETV Telugu
and ETV2 - pay and priced it together at Rs 10. ETV has a
bouquet of 12 regional channels including ETV Oriya, Gujarati,
Urdu, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
Private investment firm Blackstone Group recently announced
it would pump in $ 275 million (approximately Rs 12.38 billion)
to acquire a stake in Ushodaya Enterprises Limited (UEL),
the holding company that manages Ramoji Rao's media assets.
UEL owns Eenadu, the third largest newspaper, and ETV, the
fourth largest private television broadcasting network in
the country.
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