A religious channel from India, targeting British Hindus with its mix of 'socio-spiritual-cultural' programming, is in talks with Sky to debut on the digital platform. It launched in the United States in December and hopes to be here this year, though no date has yet been confirmed.
Aastha Broadcasting Network's director Hiren Doshi confirmed with India's TV industry portal IndianTelevision.com that they had plans to come to the UK yesterday.
The company's international offering combines content from its two Indian channels: Aastha and Aastha 2. The former is a spiritual channel with focus on discourses and live Yoga demonstrations while Aastha 2 airs Bhajans and Kirtans. Programming is a mixture of Hindi, Gujarati and English.
The arrival of religious channels from India is unlikely to be greeted with surprise, especially as British Asians are seen as a lucrative and untapped market in this area. Zee TV's Alpha Panjabi broadcasts a large amount of religious programming for the Sikh community while there are a growing number of offerings for Muslims in the UK.
The Hindu community however has less options and it is precisely this niche that Aastha will be looking to fill. Already available in some shape or form across 160 countries, it is unclear how the channel will be available for UK customers.
In America it is available for $14.99 per subscriber. However the UK is a more saturated market and new pay-TV channels usually find it difficult to attract Asian customers. Many households already pay for subscription to Zee TV, B4U or Sony.
The launch of new channels meanwhile continues unabated. On January 24th Vectone Media group started airing Vectone World - its fifth channel in the UK. It already broadcasts Vectone Bolly, Urdu, Tamil and Bangla on Sky.
Aastha might end up being bundled with Sky's own Asian TV package, for which it has been trying to attract offerings since India Star TV dropped its subscription charges. Both Star and Sky are owned by News Corporation.
The channel claims to cater for the "vast Asian Indian populace spread worldwide, who have, as a race and ethnic group eternally placed socio-spiritual-cultural values above everything else".