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Following is from a report in exchange4media.

Orissa is set to get a new 24-hour news channel soon. Naxatra News channel, promoted by Prabhat Ranjan Mallick who has several business interests in Orissa, is scheduled to go on air from July 4. This is Mallick’s first venture in the media space. The channel, which is headquartered in Bhubaneshwar, has already got its license from the I&B Ministry.

Naxatra News will air local, national and international news, with the focus being more on local news. The channel has tied up with Associated Press Television News (APTN) for its news content. Apart from news, there would be various infotainment-based programmes as well as talk shows and panel discussions on current issues.

Naxatra plans to set up a bureau in Delhi shortly and also has plans of opening bureaus in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore in the near future. It has tied up with Lamhas, Mumbai, for teleport purpose.

Ashok Mohapatra has been appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Naxatra News. Mohapatra has had 16 years’ experience in print media and has worked with Sambad, the leading Oriya daily.

Currently, there are two Oriya channels operating in the state – OTV and ETV. Both are general entertainment channels.

Following are excerpts from an Odisha.in report on this.

• Existing channels: OTV and ETV
• Manoj Dash group had issued notice in the newspapers announcing that they have purchased all the stakes of MD TV.
  According to sources, Dash would soon go ahead with completing the necessary formalities with different ministries to launch his channel.

  It is likely to be a news-cum-entertainment channel in Oriya. However the promoters have so far not finalized the shape of channel. However, it would have its studio and office at Alaka Buildings in Unit-II of Bhubaneswar, from where the programmes would be up linked to the satellite from the tele-port already installed over the building.

• Pravat Kumar Mallick, promoter of Bhubaneswar College of Engineering, and Kaustav group of technical institutes has also made some progress towards launching an Oriya satelite channel named as Naxatra TV.

  According to sources close to the promoter, the channel will be basically a news channel and would also promote awareness about technical education. As a prelude to launching of the channel, the group have already launched  English and Oriya news portal Naxatranews.com, with eminent scribe Ashok Mohapatra as its editor.

• …, the only media house which has made some progress in planning for launching an Oriya news channel is Soumya Ranjan Patnaik’s ” Sambad ” group.
  

  After unexpected success of  ” Radio Chocolate ” FM Channel,  dreamer Patnaik seems to  be determined to  launch ” Sambad TV ” an Oriya satellite news channel.

  Since Sambad group is a professional group in production of newspapers , the news regarding preparations for launching of Sambad TV is likely to inspire many young journalists in the State.

Tathya.in reports that OTV will now have competition to its cable business. Following are excerpts of that report.

Wire and Wireless India Limited (WWIL and Ushodaya Enterprises Private Limited (UEPL), which controls popular ETV joined hands to float Variety Entertainment Private Limited (VEPL) …

VEPL, which has set up the state of the art control rooms in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela promises to provide better cable services in the cities of Orissa.

Announcing the launching of the services Deepak Chandnani, CEO WWIL, said that it will provide 87 channels of national and regional interest to the viewers in Orissa.

He said the services will be expanded in near future to provide digital services including triple play – voice, video and data under the aegis of “GalaxZee” by digitalization of signals.

Chandnani said GalaxZee will provide crystal clear picture, digital audio and video quality.

More number of channels will be added with multilingual facility, said he.

Provision for e-education, e-commerce gamming and video on demand facilities will be given in near future, said Chandnani.

Arvinda Mohan, Executive Director, WWIL said that the cable network service in Orissa depends on the court’s verdict.