Zee Cafe launches 11 fresh shows currently on air in US

The Zee Group's English general entertainment channel Zee Cafe today claimed to have become the first channel in the country to run popular sitcoms simultaneously with their launch in the US.


The channel today announced the launch of 11 new programmes in different genres commencing between today and early next year, which are being launched around the same time as their showing in the US, where they have been or are being produced.

Zee Cafe business head Neil Chakravarti said that the new programmes had been decided after six months of intensive research among Indian viewers who said they learnt a lot about new shows from the internet or sites like YouTube, and could not wait to see them several months or years later.

Chakravarti told a press meet here that Zee had therefore worked out deals with its studio partners in the US to get these programmes for showing within days or hours of their first showing. He admitted that this meant paying 75 to 200 per cent more than the normal payment, but said it was worth the effort.

He said there were only two general entertainment English language channels in the country, the other being Star World, and claimed that Zee Cafe was different in that it only picked programmes that would appeal to Indians.

At least four of the shows on the channel - Aliens in America, The Big Bang Theory, Unhitched, and the on-going Notes from the Underbelly - star south Asians, Neil revealed.

He said the Survivor series was probably the world's first reality show on television when it first commenced in the last decade. The 15th season Survivor: China begins in Shanghai and is the story of castaways attending a Buddhist ceremony. Having commenced in the US on 20 September, it will come on Zee Cafe early next month.



The Big Bang Theory and Unhitched are comedies, Aliens in America is a drama-based sitcom, The Sarah Connor Chronicles beginning early next year is a re-invention of the Terminator series, while Pushing Daisies, Back to You and Journeyman are romantic dramas. The others are Gossip Girl, Army Wives and Travel Girls.

Chakravarti later told Indiantelevision.com that the channel had experimented with some English shows made in India, but felt that Indian audiences were not yet ready for English fiction.

Denying that the channel showed content meant only for adult audiences, he claimed that 60 per cent of the cable and satellite homes in the country were seeing Zee Cafe, and said there were attempts to give greater publicity to these progrrammes on all the 27 Zee channels. He said that the channel was interactive in that viewers could write back on the zeecafe.tv website.

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