News18 Punjab Haryana Himachal

About News18 Punjab Haryana Himachal

Overview

News18 Punjab Haryana Himachal is a Hindi-and-Punjabi-language regional news television channel owned by the Network18 Group, serving the three northern states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Launched on 26 March 2014 as ETV Haryana/Himachal Pradesh, the channel began as a Hindi-language service for two states before being expanded and relaunched in 2017 to include Punjab — the largest media market of the three — and it adopted its present News18 identity in the network-wide rebrand of the ETV news channels. The channel broadcasts from the National Capital Region and covers a region that is among the most politically consequential and agriculturally significant in India.

The channel occupies a distinctive position in the Network18 portfolio as its specialist for the northwestern plains and hills. Punjab's politics — shaped by the Sikh majority, agrarian movements and a vibrant party system — differ markedly from Haryana's Jat-dominated electoral landscape and from the hill-state dynamics of Himachal Pradesh, and the channel's editorial challenge is to give each state its due within a single schedule. Its bilingual Hindi-Punjabi presentation reflects the linguistic reality of the region, where the two languages coexist in homes, markets and public life.

Launch as ETV Haryana/Himachal Pradesh

The channel was launched on 26 March 2014 (with full transmission beginning on 28 March) by the ETV News Network, then part of the TV18 group, as its eighth regional news channel. The launch took place in Gurgaon, and the channel was conceived as a common service for Haryana and Himachal Pradesh on the grounds that Hindi is the shared language of both states and that they form a contiguous geographic region. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting licence for the service had been granted to Panorama Television Private Limited on 30 July 2010 under the name ETV Haryana/Himachal Pradesh.

The launch was part of a rapid expansion of the ETV news network in 2014. In the months before the Haryana/Himachal launch, the network had rolled out ETV News Bangla and ETV News Kannada, and ETV News Gujarati and ETV News Odia were to follow — a burst of launches that made 2014 the most ambitious year in the network's history. ETV News Network's managing editor at the time, Rajesh Raina, said the company saw a gap in the market in both states and promised correspondents in every assembly constituency, so that the channel would be, in his words, the voice of the people in the true sense. The network invested around Rs 15 crore in technology for the new channel.

The early newsroom

The channel's first editorial leadership reflected its two-state structure: Balwant Takshak was appointed editor for Haryana and Shashi Bhushan led the Himachal newsroom, with Narendra Bhaskar heading marketing. This dual-editor model was designed to ensure that neither state dominated the other's coverage — a particular concern given Haryana's larger population and its proximity to Delhi, which can easily swamp a hill state's news agenda.

From the start, the channel's reporting leaned on the ETV network's grassroots tradition: district correspondents, constituency-level election coverage, and an emphasis on the issues of rural and small-town viewers. In Haryana, that meant the politics of the Jat community, the khap panchayats, agrarian distress and the rapid urbanisation of the National Capital Region's Haryana districts — Gurgaon, Faridabad, Sonipat and Bahadurgarh. In Himachal Pradesh, it meant the apple economy, tourism, hydroelectric projects, and the distinct political culture of a hill state where the BJP and Congress have alternated in power with unusual regularity.

Punjab joins: the 2017 revamp

The channel's most consequential transformation came in April 2017, when TV18 revamped ETV Haryana/Himachal as News18 Punjab/Haryana/Himachal, unveiled on 10 April. The revamp extended the channel's coverage to Punjab — by far the biggest media market of the three states — and reoriented its editorial priorities accordingly. Industry reporting at the time noted that Punjab would be the channel's major focus, followed by Haryana and then Himachal Pradesh, reflecting the commercial and political weight of the three states in that order.

The Punjab expansion had been planned from the channel's inception: at the 2014 launch, Rajesh Raina had said the network intended to launch a Punjabi channel later as a separate service, since Punjabi is the language of most of the state's people. The 2017 revamp delivered on that promise in a different form — not a standalone Punjabi channel, but a bilingual Hindi-Punjabi service covering all three states. The move also responded to competitive pressure: Zee Media had launched its own Zee Punjab/Haryana/Himachal service, and the race for the region's viewers was intensifying.

The News18 rebrand and later renames

The channel's 2017 revamp placed it under the News18 brand a year before the wider ETV-to-News18 rebranding wave of March 2018, making it one of the first regional channels to carry the News18 name. The rebrand aligned it with the network's national identity and its growing portfolio of regional news channels.

The channel's name has continued to evolve with the network's regional strategy. In August 2022, alongside the repurposing of News18 Urdu as News18 Jammu Kashmir Ladakh Himachal, the channel's licence was renamed News18 Punjab Haryana, reflecting a sharpening of its focus on its two largest markets. In March 2025, the service was restyled again as News18 Punjab Haryana. Through these changes, the channel has remained the Network18 group's news voice for the northwestern region, broadcasting in Hindi and Punjabi from the GSAT-30 satellite with uplinking and downlinking permission.

The three-state beat

Covering three states with distinct political cultures is the channel's defining editorial task. Punjab's politics turn on the Akali-BJP-Congress-AAP contest, the legacy of the farm laws agitation — in which Punjabi farmers played the leading role — the drug menace, and the politics of the Sikh religious institutions. Haryana's turn on Jat reservation agitations, the politics of the khaps, the BJP's consolidation, and the transformation of the state's NCR districts into corporate hubs. Himachal's turn on the BJP-Congress seesaw, the apple growers' grievances, tourism and environmental battles in the hills, and the aspirations of a state with India's highest literacy rate.

The channel's correspondents track all three state governments and assemblies, and its election coverage is among the most intensive in regional Indian television: Punjab and Haryana both elect governments with national implications, and the channel mounts constituency tours, candidate debates and counting-day programming for each. The farm economy — wheat and paddy procurement, minimum support prices, mandi politics — is the thread that runs through all three states and a staple of the channel's reporting.

Programming

The channel follows the standard 24-hour regional news format: rolling bulletins through the day, morning shows, evening prime-time debates, and weekend features. Its bilingual character shapes its presentation — Punjabi-language segments and interviews sit alongside Hindi bulletins, reflecting how the region's viewers actually speak. Election seasons bring special programming: ground reports from the constituencies, interviews with candidates and party leaders, and analysis of the caste and community arithmetic that decides elections in all three states.

The channel also covers the region's cultural life — Punjabi music and cinema, Haryanvi folk culture, Himachali festivals — and its religious calendar, from the Sikh gurpurbs to the Kullu Dussehra. Sports coverage includes kabaddi, wrestling and cricket, all of which command passionate followings in the region. The channel's YouTube and digital clips of its debates and ground reports circulate widely, extending its reach beyond traditional television households.

Competition in the region

The northwestern news market is one of India's most competitive. The channel faces Zee Punjab/Haryana/Himachal, the regional news services of national Hindi channels, dedicated Punjabi news channels, and strong print and digital competition in all three states. Punjab in particular supports a crowded media ecosystem, with multiple Punjabi-language news channels competing for the same audience.

In this field, the channel's strengths are its Network18 backing — which funds election coverage and technology at a national scale — its bilingual positioning, and its three-state footprint, which gives advertisers a single buy across Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The channel's challenge is the mirror image: to avoid being perceived as a Punjab channel with Haryana and Himachal as afterthoughts, and to keep its hill-state coverage substantive rather than token.

Digital presence

The channel's reporting reaches digital audiences through news18.com, the Network18 group's news portal, which carries dedicated coverage of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh in text and video. The portal's regional sections allow the channel's stories — a farm agitation in Punjab, a cabinet decision in Haryana, a landslide in Himachal — to reach the large diaspora of the region, particularly Punjabis living in Canada, the UK, the US and Australia, who follow homeland politics closely online.

The channel also streams live on digital platforms and maintains a YouTube presence where its debates, interviews and ground reports are clipped and shared. For a region with one of India's highest rates of smartphone penetration and a young, digitally native audience, this online footprint is an increasingly important part of the channel's distribution.

The Network18 Group

The channel is part of the Network18 Group, controlled by Reliance Industries, whose news portfolio includes CNN-News18, News18 India, CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz and regional news channels across India, with digital assets including news18.com and firstpost.com. Within the group, the channel is the specialist for the northwestern states, feeding stories of national significance — farm agitations, electoral upsets, border-district developments — to the national channels while keeping its own schedule devoted to the region.

The channel's evolution from a two-state Hindi service to a three-state bilingual operation mirrors the Network18 group's broader regional strategy: deep local newsgathering, presented in the languages viewers actually speak, backed by national-scale resources. It remains one of the few television news services attempting to cover Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh within a single editorial operation.

How to watch

News18 Punjab Haryana Himachal is available on cable and direct-to-home platforms across Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, and to Hindi- and Punjabi-speaking viewers nationally. The channel can also be watched live online through the Network18 digital platforms. More information, including live streaming and the latest regional news, is available at the official website, news18.com.