Asia Bizz: The popular Indian Hindi entertainment channel Imagine TV will soon be shutting down its operations. The channel is a part of the Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, which is a division of Time Warner’s Tuner International.
The channel is expected to shut down as it failed to attract its advertisers which has hit its cash flow. The channel was acquired from NDTV by turner in the year 2009.
Before the channel was sold to Turner, it was known as NDTV Imagine. The channel was consistently ranked low in the market which was a highly competitive General Entertainment Channels segment dominated by channels like Star, Sony Colors and Zee.
Unfortunately, Imagine TV channel was even behind channels like SAB of Sony and Star’s Star One and Life OK – which was recently launched. Siddharth Jain the Managing director of South Asia Turner International India said, “Imagine TV has not performed and grown as per expectations. While some programmes delivered satisfactory ratings, overall the channel was unable to achieve the ratings consistency needed to sustain the business and support continued investment,”.
The channel was launched by NBC Universal, which is a part of NDTV’s diversification in to non news broadcasting.
