What do Zee TV, Sony Entertainment Television, Star Plus, Star One, Star Utsav and Doordarshan have in common? This is what all these channels have had… a dedicated Disney programming block at some point in time.
As early as 1994, just before the cable and satellite boom, Disney had a dedicated block on DD. Now 11 years later, when the two Disney channels have firmed their footing in India, the pubcaster is all set to have a half hour Disney animation block on Saturdays at 10 am called Disney Jadoo.
The Walt Disney Company (India) managing director Rajat Jain said, “Today DD has a presence in over 90 million Indian homes. If you talk about 1994, the reach would have been around 10 – 20 million homes. The strategy is to reach out to a large number of young audiences across India using the reach and bandwidth of Doordarshan.”
Disney Jadoo will showcase a selection of Disney branded kids’ animation shows such as Legends of Tarzan, Mickey Mouse and Friends and 101 Dalmatians. All programs are dubbed in Hindi.
The airtime sales of the half-hour block will be handled by Disney’s advertising sales team, informs Jain.
“The idea is to entertain a larger audience that is not exposed to the C&S network. As world leaders in kids led family entertainment, we believe this is our responsibility to provide this world class content to kids in every part of India wherever we can reach them,” he added.
With this deal with DD, Disney will now add to its branded blocks are already there on Star Plus (Disney Time), Star One (Jetix Action Station) and Star Utsav.
Prior to Star, Disney blocks were also present on Zee and Sony. In the early 2000s, Disney pulled out its dubbed Hindi shows from Zee TV and entered a three-year contract with Sony Television. Post that, Zee signed a deal for a programming block with Nickelodeon, which failed to click with the young audiences. In 2002, Zee then replaced the Nickelodeon block with the Cartoon Network block.