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NEW
DELHI: The Zee Group's English general entertainment channel
Zee Cafe today claimed to have become the first channel in
the country to run popular sitcoms simultaneously with their
launch in the US.
The
channel today announced the launch of 11 new programmes in
different genres commencing between today and early next year,
which are being launched around the same time as their showing
in the US, where they have been or are being produced.
Zee
Cafe business head Neil Chakravarti said that the new programmes
had been decided after six months of intensive research among
Indian viewers who said they learnt a lot about new shows
from the internet or sites like YouTube, and could not wait
to see them several months or years later.
Chakravarti
told a press meet here that Zee had therefore worked out deals
with its studio partners in the US to get these programmes
for showing within days or hours of their first showing. He
admitted that this meant paying 75 to 200 per cent more than
the normal payment, but said it was worth the effort.
He
said there were only two general entertainment English language
channels in the country, the other being Star World, and claimed
that Zee Cafe was different in that it only picked programmes
that would appeal to Indians.
At
least four of the shows on the channel - Aliens in America,
The Big Bang Theory, Unhitched, and the on-going
Notes from the Underbelly - star south Asians, Neil
revealed.
He
said the Survivor series was probably the world's first
reality show on television when it first commenced in the
last decade. The 15th season Survivor: China
begins in Shanghai and is the story of castaways attending
a Buddhist ceremony. Having commenced in the US on 20 September,
it will come on Zee Cafe early next month.
The
Big Bang Theory and Unhitched are comedies,
Aliens in America is a drama-based sitcom, The Sarah
Connor Chronicles beginning early next year is a re-invention
of the Terminator series, while Pushing Daisies, Back
to You and Journeyman are romantic dramas. The
others are Gossip Girl, Army Wives and Travel
Girls.
Chakravarti
later told Indiantelevision.com that the channel had
experimented with some English shows made in India, but felt
that Indian audiences were not yet ready for English fiction.
Denying
that the channel showed content meant only for adult audiences,
he claimed that 60 per cent of the cable and satellite homes
in the country were seeing Zee Cafe, and said there were attempts
to give greater publicity to these progrrammes on all the
27 Zee channels. He said that the channel was interactive
in that viewers could write back on the zeecafe.tv website.
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