MAMI TV: Manipur's Art, Culture and News Channel from Imphal
MAMI TV is a Meitei-language television channel from Imphal, Manipur, that combines news, entertainment and a deliberate cultural mission. Its name is an acronym — MAMI stands for Manipuri Art of Moving Image — and that expansion explains the channel better than any slogan could. Launched in 2018 by the MAMI TV Network, the channel set out to preserve and promote the art and culture of Manipur through the moving image, while also running the prime-time news bulletins and sports coverage that a modern Manipuri audience expects.
In a state whose television landscape is dominated by news services from Imphal's cable networks, MAMI TV occupies a distinctive middle ground: a multi-entertainment channel carrying art, culture and educational content alongside a 24-hour news operation. Its programmes reach viewers on television in Manipur and, through its app and YouTube channel, the Manipuri diaspora everywhere else.
Overview
MAMI TV is listed among the entertainment and music channels of the Meitei language, with a 2018 launch date, the website mamitv.in and the MAMI TV Network as its parent. The channel's own app description defines it as a multi-entertainment channel bringing diverse content related to art and culture, enriched with educational and exclusive content as well as entertainment programmes. At the same time, its news arm presents itself as a 24-hour Manipuri news channel, and its social branding covers news, entertainment and sports under one network identity.
The dual identity — cultural channel and news channel — is not a contradiction in the Manipuri market. Manipur's viewers have long received news and entertainment from the same local networks, and MAMI TV's schedule, mixing evening news bulletins with music and cultural shows, follows that established pattern while giving the cultural half an explicit, stated purpose.
History and Launch
MAMI TV launched in 2018, entering a Manipuri television scene that already included long-established services such as ISTV and Image TV in the valley areas, and the Impact TV network's bundle of news, music and entertainment channels. A new entrant in 2018 faced a market where cable distribution in Imphal was mature but where no channel had made the preservation of Manipuri art and culture its founding purpose. That was the gap MAMI TV — Manipuri Art of Moving Image — was created to fill.
The channel's name itself is a piece of Manipuri cultural vocabulary: "mami" relates to image and reflection, and the network built its brand on the idea of Manipur seeing itself on screen. From its Imphal base, the channel developed both its broadcast service and its digital presence, launching a mobile app — released in version 3.0 in January 2021 and developed by Thangjing Technologies — that carries the channel's multi-entertainment offering to phone screens.
Ownership and Network
MAMI TV is operated by the MAMI TV Network, the parent company recorded in listings of Meitei-language channels. The network presents its services under a single brand across television, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X, with the YouTube operation named MAMI TV NETWORK carrying the channel's news bulletins, live shows and entertainment programmes. Public sources do not name the network's individual promoters, and the channel's public identity is institutional rather than personality-led at the corporate level.
The network's digital infrastructure is documented through its app, developed by Thangjing Technologies — a Manipur-linked technology name that recurs in the channel's app listings — and through its structured social presence, including a WhatsApp feedback group through which viewers send responses to the channel. That feedback channel is promoted in the description of programme after programme, indicating a newsroom that treats audience messages as part of its daily workflow.
Programming and Schedule
News occupies prime time. The channel brands its bulletins as MAMI TV Prime Time Manipuri News, with an English news offering alongside, and its regular bulletin strand "Chinglon Wangmagi Mapao" airs at fixed evening points — 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm editions appear in its published schedules. Named anchors present these bulletins; credits on recent editions include Geetanjali Sairem, Riya Pebam and Nirupama Mutum, giving the news operation a recognisable on-air team. Coverage concentrates on Manipur: Imphal news, district reports, state politics and the public affairs of a state whose news agenda — from law and order to development — is intensely local.
Entertainment fills the other half of the brand. The channel's signature entertainment format documented in its output is the Saturday Night Live Show, a music programme in which singers perform with the MAMI TV music band; the twenty-first episode, broadcast on 30 April 2022, featured singer Chongtham Sanatombi, was hosted by Rakesh Salam and produced by Ojitkumar Elangbam, with the programme inviting viewers to join by WhatsApp video call. Cultural strands such as "Saknairibasing Gee Wari," featuring Manipuri personalities, sit alongside sports coverage branded as MAMI Sports.
The mixture is deliberate. A viewer can come to MAMI TV for the 6:00 pm news and stay for music rooted in Manipuri performance culture — precisely the combination the channel's founders described when they defined it as a multi-entertainment channel with a cultural purpose.
Language and Regional Focus
MAMI TV broadcasts principally in Meitei (Manipuri), the official language of Manipur, with English used in its news branding and in an English news strand. Its content is made in Manipur, about Manipur, for Manipuri viewers: the art forms, music, festivals and public life of the state are its subject matter, from Imphal valley news to cultural programming that draws on the state's performance traditions.
The channel's stated ultimate goal, in its own app description, is to preserve the art and culture of Manipur by promoting it and by taking innovative approaches through digital media. That mission gives its entertainment schedule a documentary weight: recording Manipuri artists, musicians and cultural figures on television and online is itself a form of preservation for a small language community whose media footprint is limited compared with India's larger regional industries.
Availability and Platforms
In Manipur, MAMI TV is received through the state's cable television ecosystem, the established route for Imphal-based channels. Beyond cable, the channel has invested in direct digital distribution. Its Android app, Mami TV (Manipuri Art of Moving Image), is free, has recorded more than a thousand downloads in app listings, and was updated to version 3.0 in January 2021 with new features. The app is also distributed through alternative Android stores and for Windows PC through app portals.
The channel's YouTube presence, MAMI TV NETWORK, functions as its global window: news bulletins, the Saturday Night show and cultural programmes are published there, and the channel maintains Facebook, Instagram and X accounts to distribute clips and take feedback. For the large Manipuri diaspora — students and workers across India's metros and abroad — these platforms are the channel, and MAMI TV's consistent publishing there through 2026 shows a service that remains in daily production.
Audience and Market
Manipur is one of India's smaller television markets, and its channels compete for a Meitei-speaking audience concentrated in the Imphal valley and the state's districts, supplemented by diaspora viewing online. Within that market, MAMI TV's own news branding claims the standing of one of Manipur's leading credible news channels — a promotional claim, but one that signals the audience it seeks: viewers who want Manipuri news first, not as a segment within a national or Assam-based broadcast.
Its cultural programming serves the same audience differently. By staging Manipuri singers, artists and cultural personalities in regular formats, the channel gives local performers a television showcase that national entertainment channels, which rarely look at Manipur except during major news events, do not provide. The audience for that mix — news at prime time, home-grown culture around it — is the audience MAMI TV was built to serve.
Notable Programmes and People
The Saturday Night Live Show is the channel's most documented entertainment format, with named performers, a house music band and audience participation by video call — an early example of a regional channel building interactivity into a music show. Its credits name producer Ojitkumar Elangbam and host Rakesh Salam, and featured artists such as singer Chongtham Sanatombi and, in another edition, the artist Sur Athokpam.
On the news side, the recurring faces are the anchors of "Chinglon Wangmagi Mapao" and the prime-time bulletins — among them Geetanjali Sairem, Riya Pebam and Nirupama Mutum, whose names appear on bulletins published through 2026. The cultural interview strand "Saknairibasing Gee Wari" has featured figures including Adhikarimayum Sanahal and Yambem Laba, recording conversations with people of standing in Manipuri public and cultural life.
Recent Developments
MAMI TV's published output shows continuity rather than upheaval. Its news bulletins continued through the turbulent years in Manipur and into 2026, with dated editions of its regular strands appearing in September, May and March 2026 schedules, and its social and app infrastructure remains in place. The channel has not announced a rebrand or a change of ownership in the sources consulted; its development has been incremental — an app updated, a show reaching its twenty-first episode, a feedback group kept open.
For a channel launched in 2018 with an explicitly cultural charter, that steadiness is the story. MAMI TV continues to do from Imphal what its name promises: putting Manipuri art, culture and news into moving images, for Manipur first and for the Manipuri world beyond it.
