Imagine TV to Shut Down its Operations

Turner International India Pvt. Ltd has declared to shut down its Hindi General Entertainment Channel (GEC) Imagine TV after failing to keep its popularity with the viewers. It has also decided to close its international feed channel Imagine Dil Se.

Originally Imagine TV was launched by Prannoy Roy’s NDTV Networks in a joint venture with NBCUniversal in Jan 2008. Turner which is a unit of Time Warner Incorporation had acquired Imagine from NDTV Networks Plc in 2009. At present Turner is operating other television channels in India like Pogo, Cartoon Network, HBO, CNN and WB.

As according to Siddharth Jain, M.D., South Asia, Turner International India Pvt. Ltd, “Imagine TV had not performed and grown in line with expectations”. He commented that the channel was not able to achieve ratings consistency which is required to sustain and develop the business.

Though Imagine TV had seen some good period with three successful seasons of the marriage reality show “Swayamvar” and had given a hit serial like “Bandini” but the crucial and much desired rating consistency was missing from its performance. As according to the latest rankings released by TAM Media Research, Imagine TV had only 64 gross rating points which is way behind the market leader Star Plus at 271.

The popularity of Colors channel with the viewers which was launched just six months after Imagine had made the competition even tougher in the GEC category. A former Colors executive was of the opinion that once a channel loses momemtum it becomes very difficult to stop its decline.

Imagine will continue to relay its signal for a while in order to meet the regulatory requirements and to honour the business terms of its production partners and vendors. With the shut-down of Imagine TV, it has become the fourth Hindi entertainment channel to close down in the last four years after ZeeNext, Real and 9X.