New Delhi : The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has released the list of permitted private Satellite TV channels as on 30th September 2018 in which 869 channels have been granted permission by the authority. This comprised of 386 news and current affairs channels and 483 non-news and current affairs channels.
In the month of September, eight new channels received licenses while the authority has not cancelled the licenses to any of the channels as on 30 September 2018.
Out of the eight channels that has been granted permission four channels are of Zee Media Corporation’s news channels namely 1 Chennai (Tamil, English), 1 Mumbai ( Marathi,English), 1 Kolkata (Bengali, English). The authority issued license to the aforesaid channels on 11 September 2018 for both uplinking and downlinking of the four channels.
The remaining 4 channels that was permitted by the ministry was Disney Broadcasting India which got permission for a non news channel UTV HD- English on 11 September 2018 for both uplinking and downlinking of the four channels.
The other three permitted channels belongs to the Vedic Broadcasting, namely Aastha Tamil, Astha Telugu and Aastha Kannada.
So far as on 30 September 2018, 869 private TV channels were permitted in India and permission for 247 TV channels has been cancelled by the I&B Ministry.
Of the 869 permitted private TV channels, 769 channels are eligible to both uplink and downlink in India of which 365 TV channels news and current affairs channel and 404 are non news and current affairs channels. 16 private channels were permitted only to uplink from India, not permitted to downlink in India. Five of these channels were news and current affairs channels and 11 were non news and current affairs channels. The total number of private channels that are permitted only to downlink to India was 84 of comprising of 15 news channels and 69 non news channels.
