Notes on Disney Star’s launches and shutdowns
Kids’ channels: Disney Channel HD in, Baby TV HD out; Hungama HD unknown
The launch of Disney Channel HD is a much-needed addition to Disney Star’s kids’ portfolio, which has enjoyed a strong presence with four channels — Disney Channel, Hungama, Disney Junior and Super Hungama (until March 2022, Marvel HQ; until 2019, Disney XD) — but has lacked an HD channel so far, not counting BabyTV HD, which is not an Indian channel.
In fact, HD channels are few and far between in the kids’ genre, with Cartoon Network HD+ from Warner Bros. Discovery and Nick HD+ from Reliance (Viacom18) being the only options. (ETV Bal Bharat HD from the ETV Network, which was launched in April 2021 with many other ETV Bal Bharat channels, has not been added on any TV platform. Indeed the only one of these channels to be added on TV platforms is the SD version of the main ETV Bal Bharat channel, as none of the language-specific channels have been added either, with several of them later being shut down.)
Unfortunately, Hungama — whose programming largely consists of the Japanese animation show Shinchan, which has become synonymous with Hungama, along with Indian shows like Selfie with Bajrangi — does not seem to be getting an HD feed as of now, which had been planned in 2021. Nevertheless, one HD channel in the form of Disney Channel HD is probably going to be enough in the long run, and Hungama HD might have been overkill and redundant as a result.
As for BabyTV HD — whose toddler-learning- and development-oriented programming is markedly different from the loud, often crass, cartoon shows offered on Indian kids’ channels — its strange journey in India will finally come to an end, more than three years after its SD version (along with Nat Geo Music SD/HD and Nat Geo People SD/HD) were withdrawn from the country in June 2019.
English GECs: Star World channels exit, leaving solitary Disney International HD
The Star World channels (Star World SD/HD and Star World Premiere HD) have been living on borrowed time for many years. Disney Star has shifted its focus to Disney+ Hotstar for English TV shows, which is evident from the fact that Season 7 of Koffee With Karan — the celebrity chat show hosted by Karan Johar, which had become synonymous with Star World — was aired exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar from July to September 2022, further de-emphasising the linear channels. Their closure — a result of OTT platforms like Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video taking over the living rooms of urban English-speaking Indians — will see them join a graveyard littered with English entertainment and movie channels like AXN (SD/HD) from Sony Pictures Networks, Romedy Now HD from Times Network (though its SD version remains on air) and Star’s own FX (SD/HD) and Fox Crime, in addition to channels from smaller broadcasters that briefly existed in the early 2010s.
Once they finally make their exit after years of existing in a comatose state, Disney Star will be left only with Disney International HD in this genre, which has successfully completed five years of showcasing the live-action teen shows of the American Disney Channel, in spite of young Indians completely shifting to OTT platforms to get their fix of Western, Korean and other foreign content.
Disney International HD itself is a result of the shutdowns of other channels: its launch in October 2017 came at the expense of the Hindi music channel Bindass Play, which in 2014 had replaced UTV Stars, which was launched in 2011. It will be up against Comedy Central and Colors Infinity from Viacom18 and Zee Café from Zee, the last of which has now introduced a Hindi feed for some of its shows.
New Hindi movie channels: UTV channels replaced by Star Gold-branded channels
At long last, the UTV brand will be eliminated, which had been inherited from the then-Disney India when Disney acquired Star in March 2019. The three UTV-branded Hindi movie channels (UTV Movies, UTV Action and UTV HD) — the last ones remaining after all other UTV channels either shut down or rebranded before the mega-acquisition of Star — have never been as popular as major Hindi movie channels like Sony Max, Zee Cinema and Star Gold.
At Disney Star, they have always had a second-tier status, and their ownership by Star was not always made evident, given the disconnect between the Star and UTV brands, and the fact that UTV historically cooperated with Viacom18 for several Hindi movies. Therefore it is a logical and sensible decision to scrap the UTV brand, bringing an end to the legacy of one of India’s oldest media and film brands. The new channels will better position themselves within the Star Gold family and show stronger affiliation with the parent Star Gold channel.
However, another change seems to have been either cancelled or simply left hanging: the rebrand of the rural-focused Hindi movie channel Star Utsav Movies (available on DD Free Dish) to Star Gold Family. Despite the renaming of its licence from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, it seems that the channel will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future, especially as the Star Utsav brand is familiar to DD Free Dish viewers — even though the parent Star Utsav channel is no longer available on the platform.
Regional movie channels: HD bonanza from Asianet Movies HD, Vijay Super HD
As we examined in September 2021 with the launches of Zee Picchar HD (Kannada) and Zee Thirai HD (Tamil), regional HD movie channels are not as numerous as HD GECs. Here we discuss only the big six regional languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi), as there is no question of movie channels in smaller regional languages like Alankar TV (Odia), Pitaara TV (Punjabi), Indradhanu (Assamese), Zee Biskope (Bhojpuri) and Colors Gujarati Cinema launching HD versions.
With the exception of Telugu, which has four HD movie channels (Gemini Movies HD, Star Maa Movies HD, Zee Cinemalu HD, ETV Cinema HD) from major broadcasters, most Indian regional languages have had to be content with one HD movie channel, with other movie channels not being available in HD.
Tamil practically has only KTV HD from the Sun network, with Zee Thirai HD not being added on most platforms and Vijay Super HD long delayed; J Movie, Murasu TV, Raj Digital Plus, etc. are too small to launch HD feeds. Bengali has only Jalsha Movies HD from Disney Star — which celebrated its 10th anniversary recently, on 16 December — while Sony Aath, Zee Bangla Cinema and Colors Bangla Cinema (along with Enterr10 Bangla and Khushboo Bangla) are not expected to launch HD versions.
Most of the major Kannada movie channels (Udaya Movies, Star Suvarna Plus, Colors Kannada Cinema, Public Movies) are not in HD, and Zee Picchar HD, the only Kannada HD movie channel, has not been added on any TV platforms.
At least these languages have plenty of SD movie channels, but Malayalam and Marathi have been starved so far. Malayalam has only Asianet Movies from Disney Star and Surya Movies from Sun — neither of which has had an HD version — with no other broadcaster, such as Zee and Manorama, having a movie channel.
Marathi, meanwhile, had a near-monopoly of Zee Talkies, which thankfully is available in HD (not counting smaller movie channels like Shemaroo MarathiBana and the DD Free Dish-exclusive Zee Chitramandir) until Pravah Picture was launched in May in both SD and HD versions.
Interestingly, Sun Direct is the only DTH platform to carry Pravah Picture HD, but also the only one not to carry Zee Talkies HD. However, Disney Star has never acknowledged the presence of Pravah Picture SD/HD on Sun Direct, as the list of TV platforms (DTH and cable) to carry the channel has never included Sun Direct.
The launch of Asianet Movies HD in Malayalam and Vijay Super HD in Tamil will finally bring some new regional HD movie channels, some months after the launch of Pravah Picture HD in Marathi. In particular, Asianet Movies HD will be the first-ever Malayalam HD movie channel. While Asianet was Star’s very first regional-language channel to launch an HD version in August 2015, Star’s next few regional HD launches were Star Jalsha HD and Jalsha Movies HD (April 2016) and Star Pravah HD and Star Vijay HD (May 2016).
For many years, Jalsha Movies HD (Bengali) and Star Maa Movies HD (Telugu) were the only regional HD movie channels from the broadcaster, until the arrival of Pravah Picture HD. After these launches, five out of the six major regional languages will have an HD movie channel from Disney Star, with the exception being Star Suvarna Plus (Kannada), a language that largely remains without any HD movie channels since Zee Picchar HD is practically unavailable across TV platforms. Another movie channel without an HD feed is Star Maa Gold (Telugu), as Star Maa Movies is already available in HD.
As far as new HD movie channels from other broadcasters is concerned, hopes should be lowered as of now, because it seems Sun has shelved the launch of Udaya Movies HD (Kannada) and Surya Movies HD (Malayalam). Instead, it has been planning to launch Sun Bangla HD and Sun Marathi HD, as well as a new channel called Sun Neo (language and genre as yet unknown) in both SD and HD versions.
However, unlike Disney Star, Sun has not revealed any information about these upcoming channels in its latest RIO document, and they will remain under wraps for the foreseeable future. Therefore Asianet Movies HD, when it goes on air, will be the only HD movie channel in Malayalam like Jalsha Movies HD is in Bengali — which is aggravated by the fact that, unlike Bengali which has several SD movie channels, Malayalam does not have any competitors to Asianet Movies and Surya Movies from other broadcasters.
Sports channels: Tamil and Telugu gain HD feeds; Bengali and Marathi lose; Jalsha Josh possibly cancelled
As our article on Indian sports TV broadcasting explores, Star Sports has been hugely dominant thanks mainly to its cricket properties (the holy trinity of IPL, ICC and BCCI) but also other sports. A major part of this has been played by its dedicated regional-language channels, which Sony Sports Network and the new Sports18 channels are slowly adopting as well: Star Sports 1 Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bangla and Marathi, as well as Star Sports 3 with its Bengali and Malayalam audio feeds.
However, some of these Star Sports channels have been more successful than others, and in any case sporting events are often available with multiple audio feeds on the Star Sports channels and Disney+ Hotstar. Therefore Disney Star will launch its first-ever regional HD sports channels — Star Sports 1 Tamil HD and Star Sports 1 Telugu HD — to better serve the two biggest regional non-Hindi languages.
On the other hand, Star Sports 1 Bangla has been struggling since its launch, and Star Sports 1 Marathi has never even been viewable by anyone outside of the company, so Disney Star has wisely decided to terminate these two underperforming channels.
However, it seems it has decided against launching Jalsha Josh — a proposed movies-cum-sports channel — to replace Star Sports 1 Bangla, which is a strange decision as its logo had already been revealed, and how the channel’s strategy would have panned out may now never be known. Still, Bengali viewers will continue to be served by the Bengali audio feed on Star Sports 3, which unfortunately is no longer slated to receive an HD feed, in favour of Star Sports 1 Tamil and Telugu getting HD feeds.
Other channels: Star Movies Select, Bindass
- An SD version will be launched for the English premium movie channel Star Movies Select nearly 8 years after the HD version, which was launched in July 2015. This differentiates it from its niche-movie competitors, MN+ HD from the Times network and &privé HD from Zee (as well as the erstwhile Sony Le Plex HD, which lasted for a little over two years, from 2016 to 2018), which have all been HD-only channels. This will put it on par with other Select-branded channels, namely Star Gold Select (Hindi movies) and Star Sports Select 1/2, where HD versions were launched first, followed by SD versions a few months later in 2017. Moreover, Star Movies Select has not updated its graphics package ever since its launch, with the main Star Movies taking it to an extreme as it has been unchanged for nearly 14 years — a record — so hopefully Disney Star will consider giving its English movie channels a much-needed facelift.
- Disney Star has also U-turned on its planned shutdown of Bindass, which was launched in 2007 — originally as UTV Bindass — by Disney India as a youth-focused channel, and was known for several youth shows such as Emotional Atyachaar and Girl in the City in the pre-OTT era, before it abandoned these shows and transformed into a Hindi music channel. Similar was the case with Channel V, Star’s youth channel (when it was owned by Fox) which aired several youth shows such as Gumraah, Sadda Haq and Dil Dosti Dance before being converted into a music channel in 2016 and eventually shutting shop in 2018. It seems that unlike many other music channels from major broadcasters which have been axed over the years, Bindass will get a new lease of life and continue as Disney Star’s Hindi music channel, with Star Maa Music (Telugu) being its only other music channel now that Vijay Music no longer exists. The only Hindi youth channels today are MTV from Reliance (Viacom18) and Zing from Zee, and Bindass has turned out to be an unlikely exception in the rapidly shrinking list of youth and music channels, like Vijay Takkar in Tamil.
With so many changes that were put on hold for over a year, it is no surprise that all these launches and shutdowns from Disney Star will be one of the big talking points in the Indian TV industry in 2023, along with the merger of Zee and Sony that is set to be the biggest shakeup in Indian TV history, especially in light of the recent rebrand of the Sony channels that put them on course for the historic merger to challenge Disney Star’s unconquered dominance.
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