Even Star Plus, Sony aired many good shows in late 90s, 2000s and it is bcoz at that time Pay TV still catered to more of the city based audience as in rural areas still there were less Cable TV connections or access to Pay TV Channels....also due to this u will see many niche oriented programs too airing on mainstream channels at that point of time + less competition too helped in channels being less worried about ratings or other things as with limited channels each got audience + ads and even content cost was far less.Zee had many good serials when soap era was not there, campus, hasaratein, Tara, parampara, commander,Zee horror show,hum paanch, Akbar Birbal, Antakshari, but when ur favourite star plus and ekta kapoor got into partnership they ruined the Indian television so badly that till date we have to watch CID on Sony pal coz those non sense shows gets telecasted every where,star plus and ekta kapoor are curse to Indian television
Forget about that era in last 15 years too Star Network Hindi GEC channels have aired lot many good concept shows too but Zee TV, Colors has largely aired the saas bahu or other weird concept shows....even now Star Plus airs many shows which deliver good social messages in entertaining manner rather than Kundli Bhagya, Kumkum Bhagya etc which Zee TV airs