T elevision In there was one state controlled TV channel Doordarshan in India. By there were almost channels. Privately run satellite channels have multiplied rapidly since the mid-1990s. While Doordarshan broadcasts over channels there were about private television networks broadcasting in .
The staggering growth of private satellite television has been one of the defining developments of contemporary India. In , million individuals watched satellite TV on an average every week. This number went up to million in . The number of homes with access to satellite TV has jumped from million in to million in .
Satellite subscription has now penetrated percent of all TV homes. The Gulf War of (which popularised CNN), and the launching of Star-TV in the same year by the Whampoa Hutchinson Group of Hong Kong, signalled the arrival of private satellite Channels in India. In , Zee TV, a Hindi-based satellite entertainment channel, also began beaming programmes to cable television viewers in India. By , private cable and satellite channels were available including several that focused exclusively on regional- language broadcasting like Sun-TV, Eenadu-TV, Udaya-TV, Raj-TV, and Asianet.
Meanwhile, Zee TV has also launched several regional networks, broadcasting in Marathi, Bengali and other languages. Read the text carefully. . Do you think readers have changed or newspapers have changed?
Discuss. . Discuss the term infotainment. Can you think of examples?
What do you think the effect of infotainment will be?