Viacom18 to launch new channel 'Bandhan'

With this new channel, Viacom18 will have three Hindi channels in its bouquet.

Viacom18, the joint venture between Viacom and Network18, is planning to add a new channel to its bouquet. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has issued the licence for Bandhan, its new Hindi channel, under the parent group Viacom18 Private Limited. It is categorised under non-news or entertainment genre.

The company recently also obtained a licence for its new channel in the English entertainment space, Colors Infinity. The channel is launching on July 31 with both SD and HD feeds.

Bandhan will be a Hindi entertainment channel, the genre for which is not known yet. Viacom18 runs two channels in the Hindi GEC space - Colors and Rishtey. Of the two, Rishtey is a free-to-air channel that banks on content from Colors' library.

Viacom18 has channels across genre such as kids (Nickelodeon, Nick Jr. and Sonic), music & youth (MTV, Pepsi MTV Indies), English entertainment (Vh1, Comedy Central, Colors Infinity) and regional channels such as Colors Bangla, Colors Marathi, Colors Kannada, Colors Odia and Colors Gujarati. But it does not have presence in the Hindi movies and sports genres yet.

Bandhan could be either another Hindi GEC from the network or a Hindi movie channel.