Hyderabad : Sources from AP market confirm that the biggest Broadcast network in the country Star India has acquired the leading General Entertainment Channel in AP Market Maa TV.
Maa TV is owned by Industrialist Nimmagadda Prasad along with actor and former Union tourism minister K. Chiranjeevi and his brother in law Allu Aravind, Actor Ram Charan and Actor Nagarjuna. Apart from Maa TV they also run a Music Channel ”Maa Music” and Movie Channels ”Maa Movies” and ”Maa Gold”
Apparently, it seems that Star India which doesn’t have a satellite channel in Telugu Regional language as their previous initiative in AP market ”Star Sitara” GEC launched after their regional tie-up with Asianet’s Jupiter Entertainment has failed to perform to the expected level and the channel was defunct since 2010 due to enormous losses.
Star India and Asianet decided to wind-up the channel and since then Star India was not having a channel in Telugu despite AP market being the second largest market among South Regional languages in terms of ad revenues.
It seems Star India is hoping to fill the blank in AP market with the acquisition of Maa TV instead of launching and building a new channel in the market that is already facing a huge competition among the existing players Zee Telugu, Maa TV, Eenadu TV and Gemini TV, as all of them are scoring neck to neck in terms of ratings with no defined permanent market leader unlike in the case of Sun TV in TN market and Asianet in Kerala market.
Market Sources are positive about the acquisition of Maa TV by Star India as this will help Star group in many ways to position themselves as a leader in almost all the South regional languages.
Maa TV is holding the No.1 position in the AP market as per the last week ratings and it is having plenty of top rated fiction shows and mega non-fiction properties like Meelo Evaru Koteeswarudu 2, which is the Telugu version of KBC.
The deal is expected to be fruitful for the Industrialist Nimmagadda prasad and Team as a single language regional player they will have very limited options to grow in the changing conditions in national distribution and digitisation platforms.
The valuation and other details of the deal will be updated shortly…
