DV Group of companies have announced the launch of their new media venture – India’s first free-to-Air Hindi kids cartoon channel –Maha Cartoon TV. As a media and broadcasting company, they had already launched Maha Movie channel and in future the group is planning more channels from their stable under ‘MAHA’ brand of channels.
According to their press release, here’s why they thought of a free-to-air kids channel:
“During our tenure of launch of free-to-Air Maha Movie channel and after few months of its operations, we got innumerable responses and queries about the need of a dedicated kids channel on free to air platform. The idea then
took shape and as a result of two years of rigorous planning on various aspects of creation and compilation of programming for the kids’ audience this channel came into existence today.
The space for a Hindi free to air channel was virtually lying idle and nobody had explored this space to give quality entertainment for majority of Indian kids who do not have any option of watching kids channel free of cost. The market size of the rural and semi urban areas of kids constitute to about 65 per cent of the entire audience for which they have no other option but to pay and watch for kids’ entertainment or else forego the kids’ requirement due to low paying capacity of the family to afford kids entertainment channels.”
Here’s what the promoters of the group have to say about this project:
DV Group, chariman and founder director, Darshan Singh and DV Group, managing director and founder director, Vishvajeet Sharma has the following viewpoint on this project:
Sharma said “Today we have more than 20 kids channels in national domain but none of the channel is free to air. 65 per cent of the kids target audience which reside in rural and semi urban areas in India is not able to access the kids entertainment space because of high acquisition cost of the content and time taken to prepare this content is also more, as a single episode of 22 minutes takes one and half to two months to complete therefore increasing the cost of acquisition and creation”.
Adding to the comment made by Sharma, Singh expressed, “I relate to this audience as I come from rural area, from where I came and established our commercial ventures and by spending time and energy on establishing ourselves in the media industry , we felt that it was about time to give something back to the people where we belong.”
DV Group, CEO, Sanjay Verma further elaborated that Diwali came early this year for the Indian Kids as they are launching India’s first Hindi free-to-air kids cartoon channel Maha Cartoon TV. It is a hindi language channel aiming at the four to 14 age group and will feature unique cartoon characters conceived and made by in-house production teams. They have created Indian characters which instantly appeal to Indian kids audience and have the potential to be popular home grown characters which Indian kids can easily relate to.
Content and Key Driver Shows
The key driver shows and cartoon characters which will debut on Maha Cartoon TV are as follows:
Mooshak Gungun– Mooshak Gungun is the Indian adaption of the classical cat and mouse chase show which will have frills, adventure, Indian origin and Indian flavor. This show inculcates true value of friendship and compassion.
Bal Chanakya– An Indian kid with a sharp mind and a strong ability to overcome various obstacles with ease and composure. “Chankaya Ka Brain Jaise running Bullet Train”
Panchtantra Stories– This series is compilation of short stories of Panchtantra which gives a message of our immense cultural heritage and respecting our wild life and our eco system.
Ciko– This character and series will tell you all the facts related to various aspects of life which we are unaware of or do not know.
The channel will also reportedly air a varied variety of foreign content which will be shown for the first time in the Indian market from various countries and will be dubbed in Hindi for the Indian audience.
Apart from cartoon series, the channel will also air interactive and educative programming. “Techno Kids” will debut as the first techno commercial show which aims at harnessing kids’ imagination and making great gizmos from day to day items which are used in Indian homes.
The channel also has plans to air movies in the near future.