Viacom18’s BDM license renamed Rishtey Bhojpuri by MIB

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) today updated its permitted satellite TV channel database with the renaming of Viacom18’s BDM license as ‘Rishtey Bhojpuri’. The Ministry had back on 25th March 2019 granted Viacom18 the ‘BDM’ license along with 8 other licenses.

According to the Ministry, Viacom18’s BDM license was at some point in time renamed to ‘Rishtey Laheriya’ before being subsequently again renamed to ‘Rishtey Bhojpuri’. Rishtey Bhojpuri will operate from Intelsat-17 and has already bagged a slot on DD Free Dish in the recently concluded 3rd annual (52nd) DD Free Dish auction for MPEG-2 slots.

Channel Name	Company	Category	Uplinking & Downlinking/ Uplinking Only/ Downlinking Only	Language	Date of Permission
Rishtey Bhojpuri (Earlier known as : Rishtey Laheriya Prior to that BDM)	VIACOM 18 MEDIA PRIVATE LIMITED	NON-NEWS	UPLINKING & DOWNLINKING	English, Hindi & other Indian regional languages	25/03/2019

For the unversed, BDM had last year as well bagged a slot on DD Free Dish via 2nd annual DD Free Dish auction as a Bhojpuri Movie channel. BDM however went on to exit DD Free Dish in June 2020.

Viacom18 recently had its ‘PICK-A-TRICK’, ‘Connected’, and ‘ECO-LUTION’ license cancelled by the Ministry resulting in 8 out of 9 licenses granted in March 2020 being cancelled namely Connected, ECO-LUTION, HAWA MAHAL, IMIX, MY TUBE, PICK-A-TRICK, STORY CITY, and TREBLE.