India has 890 licensed channels
August 9, 2017
By Chris Forrester
India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) says the nation’s official channel count now stands at 890. The ministry added nine new licences in July 2017.
The new licences went to seven non-news services and two for news channels.
Prashant Chothani, who is already active internationally with his TravelXP travel and lifestyle channel has been granted a licence to operate the channel in English, Gujarati and Hindi languages. Chothani’s company owns and operates a clutch of music channels, namely Music India, Sangeet Marathi, Sangeet Bhojpuri and Sangeet Bangla.
During 2017, to July 31st, the MIB has authorised 33 channels In all, the MIB has authorised 1087 channels, but has cancelled the operating licences for 197 services.