Hathway announces launch of Bollywood channel

Called 'Hathway CCC Cine', the channel will be made available to all of Hathway's cable subscribers, free of cost.

Cable and broadband service provider, Hathway, has announced the launch of a Bollywood channel, called 'Hathway CCC Cine', on its distribution network across India. It will be available on channel No.110 in Hyderabad, channel No. 309 in Bengaluru and channel No. 112 across the rest of India.

While the network does have local movie channels across different cities, this is will be its first pan-India movie channel. Hathway Music is the network's pan-India music channel.

Hathway CCC Cine, the new 'premium movie channel', as the company terms it, will be made available to all its cable subscribers at no additional cost and will be part of Hathway's existing base pack.

The development is, in part, motivated by the on-going digitisation of the Indian cable television industry, we learn. The new channel will have a library of movies from studios including Shemaroo, Yashraj and Eros. Hathway currently owns a library of 1,000 films from these studios, including several recent (2013) releases.

More channels from Hathway are on the cards. They will cover genres like general entertainment, kids, music, regional movies, lifestyle and adventure.

About Hathway CCC Cine, Amit Dave, AVP, content business, Hathway, says, "The channel is not an ad-free channel. It is a capsule channel," adding, "Hathway CCC is a national channel which has a great potential for national advertisers."

When acquisition costs for satellite rights of movies are on the rise, why did the network decide to launch another channel? "Hathway CCC is a cable-centric channel running only on Hathway cable network. It is a value-added channel only for Hathway subscribers. The cable rights cost is far lesser than satellite rights, which makes it viable to run this channel. It also gives an option for local advertising, unlike satellite channels," answers Dave.

Generally, a Hindi movie channel telecasts about 250-300 movies in a year. And the channels tend to repeat movies quite often. "The movies are repeated based on TRPs, demand from advertisers and the rights. Also, a few repeats do happen due to limited stock of A and B category of films," Dave says, about the genre and trends therein.