Big Broadcasting's lifestyle and music channel to be launched this year

There finally seems to be some action at Reliance ADAG's broadcast stable, Big Broadcasting. Although Big officials are tight-lipped about the venture, sources close to the company say that two of its channels will see the light of the day this year.

The lifestyle and English movie channels, in all likelihood, will be the first to go on the floors. The operations team has completed the set up and is waiting for a go ahead from the corporate office. The company had earlier kept its broadcasting plan on hold due to market conditions.

All the channels will have the prefix Big; however, the specific names could not be ascertained. The lifestyle channel will be dedicated to fitness, covering aspects such as nutrition, body, exercises and content for it has already been outsourced to production houses such as Wizcraft.

For the English music channel, the company has signed deals with music labels such as Sony and Universal, indicating that the launch is due soon. "There's no channel dedicated to fitness on Indian television and the English music genre has only one channel till date, so there is a lot of scope to offer novelty," says a senior official from the company.

Meanwhile, two divisions, Big Boom and Big Productions, have been formed within the company. Big Boom is a film marketing set up while Big Productions produces software for broadcasters. As of now, the division is churning out content for regional channels in Marathi and Bengali.

Reliance has license to launch 20 channels comprising news channels, children's channels, movie channels, music channels and regional channels. The launch was to kick start towards the end of 2008 and continue throughout 2009.