Anil Ambani to launch English channel in India

Washington: Anil Ambani, in collaboration with CBS, has launched an English-language channel that will bring shows never before seen in India to a television screen (and set top box) near you.

Ambani’s Reliance Broadcast Network’s joint venture with CBS Studios International has launched shows of sassy Judge Judy, and television personality and cooking show host Rachael Ray will anchor the weekday, daytime line up, reports the Wall Street Journal. And CBS’s new hit cop show ‘Blue Bloods’ will be the newest thing for Indian television on Thursday nights. Also, the shows Ambani is bringing to his new channel will not be old reruns that you may have seen on other channels. ‘Entertainment Tonight’ will be broadcast in India 12 hours after the U.S. broadcast as will the nightly broadcast of another celebrity news and gossip show, ‘The Insider’. Both ‘Survivor’ on Friday nights and ‘NCIS’ on Monday to Wednesday will be the “Latest Season!” the channel’s news release breathlessly declared. And the ‘Late Show with David Letterman’ will be on every weeknight “24 Hrs after U.S. broadcast!” Saturdays and Sundays will each have six-hour marathons of ‘CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’, ‘CSI: NY’ and ‘CSI: Miami’. CBS has plans to launch two more channels once Indian viewers prove they are willing to pay to subscribe to them. ANI