News18 Urdu

About News18 Urdu

Overview

News18 Urdu was an Urdu-language television news channel owned by the Network18 Group, serving Urdu-speaking audiences in India and the Gulf. Launched in 2001 as ETV Urdu, it was one of the earliest dedicated Urdu television channels in the country, and for more than two decades it carried a mix of news, current affairs and entertainment programming in a language spoken by tens of millions of Indians. In 2018 it was rebranded as News18 Urdu, and in August 2022 the brand was retired when the channel was relaunched as News18 Jammu Kashmir Ladakh Himachal, with its broadcast licence's language authorisation expanded to Hindi, Dogri, Urdu and Kashmiri. This profile records the history of the Urdu channel in its 2001–2022 form.

The channel mattered because Urdu television was — and remains — a small and fragile corner of Indian broadcasting. While Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali channels number in the dozens, full-time Urdu channels could be counted on one hand. ETV Urdu, and later News18 Urdu, was the most prominent of them: a free-to-air, 24-hour service backed first by the Ramoji Group and later by one of India's largest media conglomerates. Its two-decade run made it a reference point for Urdu journalism on television and a training ground for a generation of Urdu broadcast journalists.

Launch as ETV Urdu

ETV Urdu was launched on 15 August 2001 — India's Independence Day — by Cherukuri Ramoji Rao, the chairman of the Eenadu group of publications and the Ramoji Film City, at the film city's complex in Hyderabad. The launch came after more than a year and a half of programming preparation, and the channel went on air as a 24-hour free-to-air digital channel. At a time when most Indian regional channels were still finding their feet, the launch of a full-time Urdu channel was a notable gamble, and Ramoji Rao positioned it as a service to a linguistic community that mainstream television had largely ignored.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting licence for the channel was granted to Panorama Television Private Limited on 6 June 2001 under the name ETV Urdu, with permission to broadcast in Urdu. The channel operated from the GSAT-30 satellite with uplinking and downlinking permission, and its base in Hyderabad — a city with one of India's largest Urdu-speaking populations and a historic centre of Urdu culture — gave it a natural home and a deep pool of talent.

The programming mix

Unlike the pure news channels that the ETV network would later launch, ETV Urdu was conceived as a general-interest channel with a strong news spine. Its schedule combined hourly news updates with telefilms, family dramas, daily soaps, devotional programmes and musical shows. The channel's stated USP was fresh, original programming made for the channel rather than dubbed or outsourced content — a significant commitment given the economics of a niche-language channel.

The language policy was a deliberate editorial choice. Rather than the highly Persianised Urdu of literary tradition, which company officials acknowledged few viewers fully understood, the channel used the Urdu spoken by ordinary people — the conversational register of the bazaar and the mohalla — in order to reach the broadest possible audience. News programmes such as Khaas Baat delivered the day's headlines in this accessible idiom, and the mix of entertainment and information was designed to keep viewers with the channel through the day rather than tuning in only for bulletins.

The target audience

The channel's target audience was twofold: the Urdu-speaking population of India, concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Karnataka, and the large South Asian diaspora in the Gulf countries, where Urdu serves as a lingua franca among migrant workers. The Gulf audience was particularly important to the channel's economics, since satellite distribution made the free-to-air signal available across the Middle East, and Gulf advertisers valued access to the migrant viewership.

Within India, the channel positioned itself as a voice for a community that felt underserved by mainstream news. Urdu newspapers had a long and distinguished history in the country, but Urdu television was thin, and ETV Urdu's news bulletins — covering national politics, community issues, education, and cultural events such as mushairas and literary festivals — filled a gap that Hindi and English channels did not address. The channel's coverage of issues like Urdu-medium education, Waqf properties and minority welfare gave it a distinct editorial identity.

The Urdu Duniya partnership

One of the channel's notable institutional relationships was with the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), the government body charged with promoting Urdu. From 8 January 2011, the council collaborated with the channel on a bi-weekly half-hour programme called Urdu Duniya, telecast on Saturdays and Sundays, which covered events related to Urdu language, literature and culture across the country, including the council's own activities and study centres. The partnership illustrated the channel's role as a platform for the Urdu cultural ecosystem — not just a news outlet but a stage for the language's literary and institutional life.

The programme ran in collaboration with the channel through its ETV years and into the Network18 era, and it was one of the longest-running sponsored strands on any Urdu television channel. For viewers, it was a window onto mushairas, book releases, seminars and educational initiatives that received little attention elsewhere on television.

Acquisition by Network18

In 2014, the channel changed hands along with the rest of the ETV news network when Reliance Industries completed its acquisition of the Network18 Group. The ETV news channels, including ETV Urdu, became part of Network18's regional news portfolio, operated through Panorama Television. The acquisition gave the Urdu channel the backing of a national network for the first time, with access to shared newsgathering resources and to Network18's national channels.

Under Network18, the channel continued to broadcast in Urdu and to serve its established audience, while the new owners evaluated the future of the ETV brand across their regional portfolio. The Urdu channel's licence remained authorised for Urdu-language broadcasting only, and it continued to operate from the GSAT-30 satellite as it had under the Ramoji Group.

Rebrand to News18 Urdu

On 16 March 2018, ETV Urdu became News18 Urdu, part of the network-wide retirement of the ETV brand in favour of the News18 mother brand. The new identity was unveiled at the News18 Rising India Summit alongside the rebranded regional channels for Rajasthan, Bihar-Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh. The rebrand brought refreshed graphics and packaging and aligned the Urdu channel with the network's national identity, while its programming language and audience focus remained unchanged.

The renaming was the culmination of a process announced the previous year, when TV18 declared its intention to make News18 the mother brand for all its news channels. For the Urdu channel, the change was largely cosmetic — the same licence, the same language authorisation, the same audience — but it placed the channel visibly within one of India's largest news networks, a symbolic upgrade for a niche-language service.

The end of the Urdu brand

In the summer of 2022, Network18 decided to repurpose the channel. The broadcaster registered a trademark for a new regional service, and in June 2022 the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting renamed the channel's satellite licence from News18 Urdu to News18 Jammu Kashmir Ladakh Himachal. The renamed licence's language authorisation was subsequently expanded from Urdu alone to four languages — Hindi, Dogri, Urdu and Kashmiri — and the relaunched channel went on air on 15 August 2022, with the change taking effect across distribution platforms on 18 August 2022.

The relaunch ended the standalone Urdu channel's 21-year run. The decision reflected the commercial realities of niche-language broadcasting: a single-language Urdu news channel struggled for advertising revenue, while a multi-language regional channel for the strategically important Jammu and Kashmir region — covering Hindi, Dogri, Urdu and Kashmiri audiences — offered a larger market. The Urdu audience was not abandoned entirely, since Urdu remained one of the new channel's authorised languages, but the dedicated Urdu brand ceased to exist.

Legacy in Urdu broadcasting

News18 Urdu's two decades on air left a distinct legacy. It was the longest-running dedicated Urdu television news and entertainment service in India, and it demonstrated that Urdu broadcasting could sustain a national footprint when backed by a serious media house. The channel trained and employed a generation of Urdu journalists, anchors and producers, many of whom went on to work in digital Urdu media, which has grown rapidly as the television space for the language contracted.

The channel also set a template for accessible Urdu broadcasting. Its insistence on the spoken Urdu of ordinary people, rather than a literary register, influenced how later Urdu media — including YouTube news channels and digital portals — addressed their audiences. And its cultural programming, from mushairas to the NCPUL's Urdu Duniya, preserved on television a record of the language's public life in the 2000s and 2010s that has few parallels.

The Network18 Group

During its final years, the channel was part of the Network18 Group, one of India's largest media conglomerates, controlled by Reliance Industries. The group's news portfolio includes CNN-News18, News18 India, CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz and regional news channels across the country, and its digital assets include news18.com and firstpost.com. The Urdu channel was the group's only service in the Urdu language, making it a unique — if commercially challenging — part of the portfolio.

The 2022 repurposing of the channel's licence into News18 Jammu Kashmir Ladakh Himachal kept the underlying broadcast infrastructure within the group while redirecting it to a different editorial mission. The Urdu-language authorisation survives within the new channel's four-language mandate, a reminder of the licence's origins as India's pioneering Urdu television service.

Online presence

The channel maintained a digital presence through urdu.news18.com, the Urdu portal of the News18 group, which carried Urdu-language news in text and video. The portal continues as part of the network's digital offerings, serving readers who prefer their news in Urdu script. Archived material from the channel's two decades on air — including episodes of Urdu Duniya produced with the NCPUL — remains available on video platforms, preserving a record of the channel's contribution to Urdu broadcasting in India.