New Delhi: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has approved the name change application of 9 channels in the last 2 months. The ministry has approved the name change approvals of Hi-Dost!, Mango, ANB News, News 11 Bharat, Naaptol, Bangla Naaptol, Malayalam Naaptol, Kannada Naaptol, and Tamil Naaptol.
| S No. | Channel Name | Company | Category | Uplinking & Downlinking/Uplinking Only/Downlinking Only | Language | Date of Permission |
| 1 | Naaptol (earlier NT1) | Cinema 24×7 Pvt. Ltd | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Hindi, English and all scheduled Indian Languages | 25/08/2017 |
| 2 | Tamil Naaptol (earlier NT2) | Cinema 24×7 Pvt. Ltd | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Hindi, English and all scheduled Indian Languages | 25/08/2017 |
| 3 | Malayalam Naaptol (earlier NT3) | Cinema 24×7 Pvt. Ltd | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Hindi, English and all scheduled Indian Languages | 25/08/2017 |
| 4 | Kannada Naaptol (earlier NT4) | Cinema 24×7 Pvt. Ltd | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Hindi, English and all scheduled Indian Languages | 25/08/2017 |
| 5 | Bangla Naaptol (earlier NT5) | Cinema 24×7 Pvt. Ltd | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Hindi, English and all scheduled Indian Languages | 25/08/2017 |
| 6 | News11 Bharat (Earlier News30, News Guru) | MEDIA GURU NEWS PVT. LTD. | NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Hindi, English and all scheduled Indian Languages | 12/10/2011 |
| 7 | Mango (Earlier Satkar) | Cobol Communications Pvt. Ltd. | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | English and All Indian Languages | 26/02/2014 |
| 8 | ANB News (Earlier PRATINIDHI/4 REAL NEWS /DEV BHUMI ) | OMEGA BROADCAST PVT LTD | NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | HINDI, ENGLISH AND ALL OTHER INDIAN SCHEDULE LANGUAGE | 16/06/2011 |
| 9 | Hi-Dost! (earlier BONG) | MEDIA WORLDWIDE LIMITED | NON-NEWS | UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING | Bengali, Hindi, English, and Multi-lingual | 10/04/2019 |
Many of these channels have already been renamed and are operational. Hi-Dost! hasn’t started its operations yet. The license is owned by Media WorldWide Limited which was initially granted the license on 10 April 2019 in the name of Bong. Mango was earlier known as Satkar TV which is reported to have been a Telugu devotional TV.
News11 Bharat was recently renamed with Tata Sky updating its EPG recently along with Naaptol channels EPG. The channel has also been renamed on C-Band. Naaptol channels have also undergone renaming recently.
NT1 has rebranded as Naaptol Hindi, NT2 as Tamil Naaptol, NT3 as Malayalam Naaptol, NT4 as Kannada Naaptol and NT5 as Bangla Naaptol. Apart from these NT8 has also rebranded itself to Cinema TV India and NT9 to Telugu Naaptol. Cinema TV India and Telugu Naaptol, however, was yet to receive the name change approval when Cinema 24*7’s other name change approvals were granted.
The ministry’s Satellite TV channel database has been down from almost 2 months due to which recent changes to the licensed TV channels database could not be reported. While the database is yet to go back live, DreamDTH has from sources learned that ministry has granted 9 name change approvals recently. There is no information however as to whether any new license had been granted or cancelled at the time of going to press in the last two months. DreamDTH had earlier on 04 July reported that MIB had approved around 21 name permit applications which included ABP News HD, Sony Marathi HD, and MTunes+ among the major changes.
First I thought they saying to all as “Hi Dost” 😂😂
Unique name for a channel. Interesting to see what genre it belongs to.