Before 1990s, Doordarshan had monopolized newscast on Indian television and also turned the news programs into a dull exercise. Now the private channels made the news an essential commodity, a basic necessity of life like food, cloth and shelter. The strong point of all today`s news bulletins is their topicality, objectivity, glossy editing and high-quality visuals. News has traveled a long way from the DD era. From Local events to International events, breaking news-to-news analysis, television soap to page3 news, every happening comes under purview of news.
The emerging media powerhouse provided prime time television content to almost all leading satellite channels in India including BBC, Star Plus, Sony Entertainment
Television, Zee, MTV and Discovery. After The India Show, TV18 produced a weekly business news program India Business Report for BBC World. Indian viewers had very limited options (like public service broadcaster Doordarshan, BBC and CNN) for watching the television news. For televised news, the viewers had to watch Dordarshan and some international news channels like BBC or
CNN. In this race to provide more news, more information, Zee Television jumped into the battlefield by launching the news channel Zee News in 1995.
The other round-the-clock news channel, the Murdoch-owned Star TV beamed its exclusively 24-hour news channels,
Star News in 1998. Star made a contract of five year with Prannoy Roy-owned
NDTV (New Delhi Television Company) to provide news content for this news channel. The untiring exhaustive coverage of the Kargil war between India and Pakistan gained more publicity and attracted more viewers towards the electronic channel. After the huge success of news programme `Aaj Tak`, TV Today
group launched a 24-hour Hindi news channel with the same name `
Aaj Tak`, in December 2000, which covers India with insight, courage and plenty of local flavor. Within 11 months of its launch, Aaj Tak emerged as India`s number one news channel and was awarded Best News Channel award from Indian Television Academy Awards.
With the expiry, NDTV forayed into broadcasting business by simultaneously launching two 24-hour news channels;
NDTV 24X7 - English news channel and NDTV India - Hindi news channel, which targets the Indian Diaspora across the world. The world`s largest family `Sahara India Parivar` launched a 24-hour national Hindi news channel,
Sahara Samay, in March 28, 2003. It is the first ever city-centric satellite news channels covering 31 cities in India with their own city news bulletins.
