Over the past few years, The Walt Disney Company has been either shutting down its Fox-branded channels in several countries or rebranding them with new names, particularly with the Star Channel brand introduced for non-Indian markets. As reported earlier, only one Indian channel — namely Fox Life, Disney Star’s food, travel and lifestyle channel — was using the Fox brand, and on the morning of 13 April 2024 (Saturday), it finally ditched the Fox brand by rebranding to Star Life with a fresh, young look and colourful graphics package to fit its target demographic of intrepid, wanderlust-loving urban youth.
Surprisingly, the rebrand comes without any press release or social media post whatsoever, unlike previous rebrands of Fox Life which were covered in the media — even though its (mostly inactive) social media accounts did update their profile pictures. Notably, the Star Life logo is drastically different from that of other Star India channels, since it fits within a single line, in contrast to other Star channels which have a big colourful icon above and the channel’s name below. Non-Indian Star-branded channels use a different logo scheme, with a big STAR wordmark (with the letter A being replaced by a star icon) and the name below.
Moreover, Star Life has interestingly placed its logo in the top left corner instead of the usual top right (used by most other Disney Star channels): a comparatively unusual position since the top left corner is otherwise used only by National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild among Disney Star channels. (The channel’s original incarnation as The History Channel in 2003 also used the top left, before adopting the Fox brand in 2008 and moving to the standard top right.) Among Indian broadcasters, only the Zee network uses the top left for almost all Zee-branded channels (except the flagship Zee TV), in addition to a few small regional channels as well as some state-owned ones like DD National and Sansad TV.
India was the last country to drop the Fox brand among Disney’s channels
The rebranding of Fox Life India to Star Life is significant not only within Disney Star’s portfolio but globally since the Fox brand has come to an end not only in India but within Disney as a whole. This marks the end of the Fox brand among Disney’s channels globally, as all other Fox-branded channels across the world have rebranded using Star, FX or other brands, including Dlife in Japan and Now in Turkey. Therefore, the Fox brand is only used in the US by the now-unrelated Fox Corporation (for channels like Fox News, Fox Business and Fox Sports) as well as Fox Sports in Australia, which have nothing to do with Disney.
Most recently, in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) on 1 March, four Fox-branded channels rebranded using Star names, in addition to the existing Star Movies and Star World which adopted the new common look while keeping their names. (Today, Star World is only available in MENA, after its closure in India in March 2023, as well as in Taiwan thereafter.) The last country to adopt the non-Indian Star Channel brand was Spain, where the Fox Channel brand was retired on 11 March, ten days after the MENA rebrand.
It is expected that the Indian version of Star Movies and Star Movies Select will follow suit and get new logos and brands in the coming months — their first rebrandings since 2009 (a 15-year record) and 2015 respectively — as trademark registrations have been filed for the same with the Indian government’s Intellectual Property Office. However, they will not use Star Life’s unique logo scheme and will continue with the pattern used by all other Star India channels, with a big star icon above and the name of the channel below.
It may be recalled that — besides the various channels called Star Life that replaced Fox Life in multiple European countries and MENA — Disney Star operates another channel with Indian content called Star Life, which is based in South Africa and operates across the African continent. This African Star Life channel — launched in 2018 — features Hindi serials from Star Plus and Star Bharat dubbed into English, and another such Indian-African channel called Star Select was launched in 2023.
With this unique positioning — drastically different in terms of logo, appearance and aesthetic from other Disney Star channels — Star Life has received a much-needed boost compared to other Indian food/lifestyle channels like Travelxp, Goodtimes (formerly NDTV Good Times), TLC from Warner Bros. Discovery and Food Food, which have not changed their graphics for many years running. Zee Zest, launched in October 2020, is the only other rebranding in this genre since COVID-19.
After Disney Star’s impending merger with Reliance Industries-owned Viacom18, Star Life along with the Nat Geo channels will be part of a larger offering of more than 100 channels, though only time will tell whether fellow infotainment channel History TV18 — which is currently not under the Viacom18 umbrella (instead a joint venture, AETN18 between Viacom18’s parent Network18 and A+E Networks) — will eventually be included under it. Regardless, even though the lifestyle/food genre on TV has been dwindling over time thanks to the proliferation of social media and streaming services among young Indians, Star Life’s new, fresh, youthful look will serve the channel well for a long time.
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