Watch Non StopWhy there are so many
India is a federation of states with their own languages, governments and elections, and its television reflects that. A national network typically runs a Hindi channel, an English channel and often a business channel, and regional groups run channels in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi and other languages. Add the public broadcaster and the parliamentary channels and the count runs into the hundreds.
Indian broadcasters adopted open live streaming early and thoroughly. Networks such as NDTV, Aaj Tak, India Today and WION, and the public broadcaster's DD News, have long run continuous official streams. For a viewer outside India, that makes the country's news unusually accessible.
The three tiers
Hindi national channels
The largest audiences by far. Fast, loud and visual, with reporters across the northern and central states. If you want to know what most Indian viewers are seeing tonight, this is the tier to watch.
English national channels
A smaller domestic audience, but influential, and the natural entry point for international viewers and the diaspora. Some are aimed explicitly at a global audience and cover world affairs from an Indian standpoint.
Regional-language channels
The least known abroad and arguably the most informative. State politics decides much of what happens nationally, and the regional channels cover their state in a depth the national networks do not attempt. During state elections they are the primary source.
Business and markets
India has several dedicated business channels in English and Hindi, organised around the trading day of the Mumbai exchanges, with a pre-open show, continuous market coverage and a closing wrap. They are listed with the other market channels in the trading category. The guide to live business news explains how to use them.
Public and parliamentary broadcasting
The public broadcaster runs national and regional news services, and Parliament has its own television service carrying sittings of both houses. As everywhere, parliamentary television is unedited primary source: slower than news, and more reliable about what was actually said.
Reading the day
- Morning: headlines, press reviews and the first political reactions.
- Daytime: the reporting hours. Live coverage of press conferences, court decisions, parliament and the markets.
- Prime time: the debate shows. Several guests, one anchor, split screens and a great deal of noise. A distinctive genre, best understood as opinion rather than reporting.
- Late evening: wrap-ups and long interviews.
India has a single time zone, five and a half hours ahead of GMT, which makes planning simple: Indian prime time falls in the European afternoon and the American morning.
Big live moments
Three kinds of day turn Indian news channels into essential viewing. Counting days, when the results of a general or state election come in constituency by constituency over many hours. The Union Budget, presented to Parliament once a year and followed line by line by the business channels. And cricket: the matches themselves are rights-controlled, but the surrounding coverage on news channels is constant during major tournaments and the Indian Premier League season in spring.
The neighbours
Pakistan and Bangladesh have their own large and lively news sectors, in Urdu and Bengali, also widely streamed. Watching Indian and Pakistani channels on the same story, or Indian and Bangladeshi ones, is one of the more instructive uses of a multiview wall. All three countries have their own entry on the country pages.
Finding them on Watch Non Stop
- Open the India page on the country pages; the channels on air are listed first.
- Use the language filter in the Console to separate Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and the others.
- Search by name in the TV Guide if you already know the channel.
- Check Trending on a big news day: Indian channels draw very large simultaneous audiences and often lead the ranking.
A caution
Competition for attention is fierce, and some channels favour confrontation over verification. The usual discipline applies with extra force: watch more than one channel, separate the reporting hours from the debate hours, and prefer the primary source, whether a press conference, a court order or a parliamentary sitting, when it is available live.