DreamDTH Explains: A guide to East Indian channels (Part 2: Odia, Assamese/Northeast, Bhojpuri)

Bhojpuri channels

It may appear that there have been very few Bhojpuri channels and that broadcasters were initially hesitant to launch a channel in a largely rural language. However, credit must go to the now-defunct Mahuaa TV for being the first Bhojpuri channel to be launched, which was way back in 2008. In 2010 it expanded to the Bengali channels Mahuaa Bangla and Mahuaa Khobor — as mentioned in the previous instalment under Bengali channels — but these were short-lived and shut down in 2012 before Mahuaa TV itself ran into crores of rupees in debt and had disappeared from TV platforms by 2017. But for all its losses and eventual closure, Mahuaa TV paved the way and set the foundation for the popularity of Bhojpuri television in India — something that grew tremendously after the explosion of DD Free Dish in North Indian rural households in the late 2010s.

Today, though Zee is the only national broadcaster in the language — having not one but two Bhojpuri channels: the sole Bhojpuri GEC today, Zee Ganga, and the movie channel Zee Biskope — it will be ill-advised to dismiss the significant number of small but well-established free-to-air broadcasters that operate Bhojpuri movie channels. These range from Enterr10 Network (Bhojpuri Cinema, formerly also Dangal until it became a Hindi GEC, and Enterr10 Rangeela which shut down) to Sri Adhikari Brothers (Dabangg) to B4U Network (B4U Bhojpuri) to IN10 Media (Filamchi Bhojpuri) to Punjab’s MH One (MH One Dil Se), plus the independent Oscar Movies Bhojpuri — as well as a music channel, Sangeet Bhojpuri, by Media Worldwide Pvt. Ltd. that also operates Music India, Sangeet Bangla and Sangeet Marathi. All of these thrive on DD Free Dish’s unparalleled rural reach, but they are mostly headquartered in Mumbai or sometimes Delhi, and not Bihar and Jharkhand’s capitals, Patna and Ranchi.

Table of major Bhojpuri broadcasters

Independent Bhojpuri channels

• Movies: Oscar Movies Bhojpuri

Note: There are no Bhojpuri news channels, unlike in other regional languages, as Bihar and Jharkhand are well covered by local Hindi-language news channels serving both states — including from major national networks like Zee, News18, ITV Network (India News) and Samay — in addition to DD Bihar and DD Jharkhand since Doordarshan (unlike private networks) has separate channels for each state.

The only language with more movie channels than GECs — though many have shut down or rebranded

Today the only Bhojpuri GEC left, Zee Ganga has had a complex history: it was originally launched in 2011 by Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group as Big Magic Bihar/Jharkhand, then renamed to Big Ganga in 2016 before it and free-to-air Hindi GEC Big Magic were acquired by Zee the same year — but while Big Ganga rebranded to Zee Ganga on 20 September 2021, Big Magic did not adopt the Zee brand. In fact, as part of conditions laid down by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Big Magic is one of three channels — alongside Hindi movie channels Zee Classic and Zee Action — that Zee must sell before its merger with Sony since it has too many Hindi GECs and movie channels. Meanwhile, Zee launched its Bhojpuri movie channel Zee Biskope on 21 December 2019, some weeks before the relaunch of Zee Punjabi and the launches of Zee Thirai and Zee Picchar in January–March 2020.

The majority of Bhojpuri channels are movie channels, as mentioned above, and they are a happy hunting ground for free-to-air broadcasters which make most or all of their viewership from rural households watching DD Free Dish. For example, the Sri Adhikari Brothers network (SABGroup) is best known for its Hindi music channel Mastiii, but also has substantial viewership from Dabangg, its Bhojpuri movie channel, as well as its Marathi music channel Maiboli. Similarly, IN10 Media — which has rural-focused Hindi GECs Ishara and Nazara, as well as Epic TV for culture and heritage and Gubbare for kids — operates Filamchi Bhojpuri since 2020, while the long-running B4U Network (known for free-to-air Hindi movie and music channels) launched B4U Bhojpuri in 2019, and MH One Network (best identified with the eponymous Punjabi music channel MH One) launched MH One Dil Se in 2022.

Even so, there have been a number of Bhojpuri GECs in the past, and some of them even rebranded as Hindi GECs later. Apart from Mahuaa TV as stated above, other discontinued Bhojpuri channels include Dishum (2017–22) and Enterr10 Rangeela (2020–22), which could not survive for long. However, the most noteworthy former Bhojpuri GEC is Enterr10’s Dangal, which was originally launched as a Bhojpuri channel in 2009 but underwent a transformation into a free-to-air Hindi GEC in 2016 — and a stunning one at that, since Dangal has remained one of India’s top 5 TV channels in the national BARC ratings ever since 2019, all thanks to the unbeatable viewership from DD Free Dish. Another Bhojpuri channel that rebranded to a Hindi GEC is Anjan, but it has had very little success and is barely viewed.

This concludes our look at Eastern Indian TV channels, and our final DreamDTH Explains articles will be for West Indian (Marathi and Gujarati) and North Indian (Punjabi and Urdu) channels — a fine way to round off 2023 with our comprehensive coverage of the Indian television industry across regions, languages and genres.