Viacom18 to launch a new channel – ‘Rishtey’

Viacom18 today announced its soon to be launched new channel – ‘Rishtey’. To be launched in UK first by IndiaCast, ‘Rishtey’ promises to offer ‘variety entertainment’ showcasing content from a spectrum of genres including format shows, fiction, music, news and more. ‘Rishtey’ will be the latest addition to the Viacom18 bouquet of channels that currently includes six entertainment channels – MTV, Nickelodeon, Vh1, COLORS, SONIC, Comedy Central and film business, Viacom18 Motion Pictures.

‘Rishtey’ will be Viacom18’s second channel in the mass Hindi Entertainment Space after its flagship channel COLORS which launched in July 2008. It will be a free-to-air (FTA) channel and a part of the COLORS’ family, available on SKY Channel No.831. Commenting on the development, Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO – Viacom18, said, “While we have a horizontal presence across television entertainment, with the launch of ‘Rishtey’, we now begin the phase of strengthening our presence in each vertical as well.”

Speaking about ‘Rishtey’, Raj Nayak, CEO – COLORS, said, “With ‘Rishtey’ we intend to create a new category within the General Entertainment space, and given the rich mine of content within the Viacom18 Group, we’re confident of ‘Rishtey’ resonating well with both – viewers as well as advertisers.”

Launching ‘Rishtey’ in the UK, Gaurav Gandhi, COO – IndiaCast, said “Rishtey offers a wide range of variety entertainment programming that will engage, entertain and delight the South Asian audiences in the UK. As a free-to-air service, Rishtey perfectly complements our flagship brand Colors, by reaching out to a much wider audience base and giving them a taste of our much loved programming"