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India’s television viewers may have reason to cheer this year as a flurry of general entertainment channels (GECs) make their way to Indian homes.

Technological advancements coupled with rising income levels have created a huge demand for entertainment and production houses are rushing in. With media houses branching out last year saw a role reversal of sorts with news channels trying their hands at general entertainment and vice-versa. A news channel like NDTV went niche by entering the lifestyle space with NDTV Good Times and NDTV Imagine (a GEC), which was launched in January. After 9X and 9XM, a GEC and a Bollywood music channel respectively, INX Media plans to roll out its news channel 9X News headed by Vir Sanghvi this year. At least nine more channels are expected from the INX stable between 2008 and 2009. After venturing into the print space, Zee Group added an extra wing to its bouquet of channels with Zee Next positioned as the ‘younger sister of Zee TV’. UTV is trying to lure youngsters with Bindass. Besides these, American media conglomerate Viacom will be launching two GECs this year and Marathi newspaper Sakal too is launching two infotainment channels. With the glut of channels, will viewers necessarily be spoilt for choice? Almost all channels are lining up a host of shows ranging from music-based reality shows to a wide variety of soaps. So, if there’s Mission Ustaad, Rock the Dhun and Dhoom Macha De on 9X, Zee Next and NDTV Imagine respectively, there are family dramas like Dahhej (9X), Ek Thi Raajkumari (Zee Next) and Ek Packet Umeed on NDTV Imagine). NDTV Imagine has also forayed into the mythological space with shows like Dharam Veer, Raajkumar Aaryyan and Ramayana. However, most of the channels strongly negate the possibility of a fatigue factor seeping in. They feel that there will be healthy competition, resulting in innovative programming and producers will be experimenting a lot more with new genres of scripted and non-scripted formats. Says Yash Khanna, senior VP, corporate communications, Star India: “It is important for any channel, even if it is well established, to keep reinventing in order to avoid monotony. Even for some really long running shows like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, we need to constantly keep changing the story line to improve viewership.”