BOLLYWOOD: Filmy, Time Warner’s New South Asian Channel

Filmy, a 24-hour South Asian channel launched on Time Warner Cable's NYC region last month. The official launch is on Saturday, November 8, as part of the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival in Manhattan.

Sahara's Filmy is being broadcast by GloboSat Entertainment, the North-American licensee for Sahara programming including  Sahara One and Sahara Samay. Neerja Patel, GloboSat Entertainment on Filmy's programming:

Filmy is mainly for the Bollywood buff. It offers programming it a very different way. It’s very vibrant and young. You can get everything about films from golden oldies to the newest hits. There’s red carpets, premiers, interviews of stars. Everything about that channel is related back to South Asian Cinema.

It’s beyond movies, it’s beyond just watching a film. You can see the making of, songs and even the game shows on there are related back to Bollywood.

South Asian channels are available on cable and satellite service providers like Comcast, Cox, Optimum, Dish and DIRECTV. Dish offers 14 stations with all-Hindi mega-pack and DIRECTV’s HindiDirect™ offers 7. Filmy, available for $14.95 a month, when compared to Optimum’s five-pack international package for $19.95 and individual channels for $9.95 seems pricey, or maybe premium.

About Filmy trying to reach out to non South Asian audiences, Neerja said:

As Indian cinema picks up worldwide which it definitely has been doing, we really hope to get non South Asian viewers as well. There is lot of programming in English beyond the movies and a lot of the films have subtitles so the non South Asian viewers can enjoy the programming. We’ve teamed up with Mahindra Indo - American Arts Council Film Festival and lot of their films are very international. And that’s why we are using that as a way to launch so people don’t think it’s just a South Asian channel. Though it predominantly is, we would love to have non South Asian viewers watch the channel.

Filmy is currently available on Time Warner Cable Channel 562 and on channel 2008 on DIRECTV.

Contact Neerja Patel at 718-937-4499 Ext: 355 or mail her at neerja[at]globosatent.com for press inquiries.

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