Viacom18 to launch Free-To-Air Channel 'Rishtey' in Jan 2014

Viacom18 is has all its plans set for the New Year. Colors, which is the flagship channel of Viacom18’s brand in the entertainment space shall now have a sibling in the form of Rishtey, second GEC from the network. The new GEC will go live in January 2014 with the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) around Republic Day.  Putting rumours to rest, sources close to the development have confirmed this news. Rishtey will be the first free-to-air channel from the company’s bouquet.

For records, while all of Viacom’s competitors have second-line GEC’s; Rishtey will join the list of Star Utsav and Zee Anmol that air re-runs of the older shows of their network. These channels though, have played crucial role in adding up to the GRP’s, as ad-rates and subscription fees are highly influenced by the numbers on the charts.

While there is no substantiation on the content feed for the channel, sources state that the GEC plans to leverage on an existing library of well-liked  fiction and non-fiction shows like Baalika Vadhu, Madhubala, Uttaran, Sasural Simar Ka, Bigg Boss, Jhalak Dikhla Jaa etc.

From the looks of it, launching with a big ticket property like CCL, and a content chart of the aforementioned popular shows should enable Rishtey to build a bond with the viewers!