DreamDTH Explains: A guide to North Indian channels (Punjab, Haryana, Urdu, J&K/Ladakh)

Haryanvi, Urdu and Kashmiri channels

Most channels for Haryana are news channels, but there was previously an entertainment channel specifically for Haryana — Andy Haryana — which had a brief existence from 2017 to 2018. Interestingly, as covered in a previous article on Hindi movie and news channels — including Hindi regional news channels — different broadcasters treat Haryana differently: some like ITV Network and MH One have a channel exclusively dedicated to Haryana, while others like Zee and News18 lump it with any of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh or the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.

Urdu channels are much easier to quantify since they are mostly concentrated in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir, even though Urdu — which is simply a variant of Hindi written with a modified Arabic-esque script — is also spoken in Muslim circles in other cities like Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad in Telangana. As such, there is significant overlap between Urdu channels (some of which, like Salaam TV from Zee Media — known as Zee Salaam until December 2023 — have on-screen text in both the Devanagari and Urdu scripts) and those which focus on J&K.

Moreover, Doordarshan has two channels — DD Urdu and DD Kashir (spelt without the letter M) — for these regions. Most DTHs keep these channels close together, but not Tata Play, which places DD Urdu among other Urdu/J&K channels in the LCN 119x series, and DD Kashir on LCN 1989 in the ‘Others’ category (LCN 1950–1999) — which consists mostly of Northeastern (particularly Assamese) channels, though it also includes DD Goa on LCN 1995. Finally, since Islam is the predominant religion in Kashmir, some Islamic channels like Channel Win and Tehzeeb TV are also present.

Table of news channels for Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh

Independent channels for these states:

• Haryana news: MH One News, Janta TV, STV Haryana News, Khabar Fast and others
• Urdu news (J&K): Gulistan News
  • Urdu news (non-J&K): Munsif TV
• Urdu Islamic: Channel Win, Tehzeeb TV

Zee has the most Northern Indian regional news channels, some of which avoid the Zee brand

Zee Media’s oldest news channel for Jammu & Kashmir (then a unified state including Ladakh) is the Urdu–Hindi bilingual channel Salaam TV (launched as Zee Salaam on 1 February 2010; renamed on 16 December 2023, dropping the Zee brand) and it shows a mix of news, Islamic shows and general entertainment programmes. The renaming to Salaam TV in December 2023 — thereby abandoning the Zee brand, even though the ownership remains unchanged — was an indication that Zee Salaam was perceived more as a news channel and that moving to a neutral non-Zee name signified greater inclusivity towards entertainment programming.

Zee Media also launched another channel for J&K and Ladakh in 2023, which does not use the Zee brand either: Kesar TV J&K/Ladakh, which went live on 22 April 2023 in a digital-only form with a satellite feed potentially in the pipeline. The channel portrays itself as Kashmir ke Awaam ki Awaaz — the voice of Kashmiri people — with a more specific target audience than Salaam TV which is viewed by Urdu speakers across India, even though J&K remains the largest Muslim-majority region in the country.

Moving to Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal went on air in July 2013 — replacing Zee Punjabi, which was resurrected in January 2020 as covered above — with a second news channel (also covering Haryana), Zee Delhi NCR Haryana, being launched in March 2022. This channel replaced the Odia satellite news channel Zee Odisha — formerly Zee Kalinga News — with that channel being converted into the digital-only Zee Odisha News. With these four channels — two of which deliberately avoid the Zee brand — Zee Media has the most channels for northern Indian states, followed by News18 and ITV Network with two each, as well as Sahara Samay which operates Aalami Samay in Urdu.

With this, we have concluded our exploration into all genres and languages of the Indian TV industry with our DreamDTH Explains articles, perfectly timed as 2023 draws to a close. We hope that Indian broadcasters — especially with two mega-mergers looming: those of Zee–Sony and Reliance–Disney Star — continue to provide quality entertainment at affordable prices, and launch new channels in unexplored languages and genres, in 2024 and the years to come.