Remember Lehren?
It was the time when Doordarshan was at the Prime… It was the time when having a big satellite dish on the roof was a status symbol.. It was the time when VCP(/R)s were The Source of Home entertainment when it comes to Bollywood or Hollywood.. It was that time in late 80s, when one of its kind Video Magazine made its mark in lacs of indian homes. Any passionate bollywood fan will not forget that name “Lehren”..
The good news is Lehren is coming back on TV.. This time as a dedicated bollywood news channel.
Variety reports
Former video leader Lehren Entertainment is to launch India’s first TV channel dedicated entirely to Bollywood news and gossip.
The Lehren TV channel is skedded to launch in April. Company says it has received broadcast ministry clearance to uplink and will begin testing the service from next month.
Having a dedicated news channel on Bollywood is certainly a good news for film buffs around the country. Although almost each and every entertainment and news channel is covering Bollywood to a great extent, but the idea of having a dedicated channel and specially a name that has been a pioneer in the kind of bollywood coverage that we see today.
BusinessofCinema has some more information…
Bollywood is all set to get its own news channel. The new showbiz news and entertainment channel called Lehren is slated to launch in April this year.
Lehren’s content will be entirely film-centric, rendered in the news, information, chat and gossip formats.
The channel is promoted by Lehren Entertainment Pvt Ltd, a member of the Affiliated Media Company (AMC). The company is headed by Mritunjay Pandey. Through its holding company iLabs Capital Pvt Ltd, AMC is affiliated to the TV9 network of satellite news channels owned by the Associated Broadcasting Company (ABC) Ltd.
Lehren TV has obtained the uplinking licence and plans to launch in April. “We are eyeing 14 April as the launch date. The dry run should start in mid-March,” says Lehren Entertainment founder and MD Mritunjay Pandey.
The Bollywood-centric free-to-air news channel will also have a small portion of its content for other films across the country. Besides news, it will have chat and gossip formats. “It will be a Hinglish (predominantly Hindi but also have English language) channel,” says Pandey.
The ad sales and uplinking will be handled by ABCL to drive in the synergies with the TV9 group of channels.
Another plus for the Channel is the Free to Air model it is adapting.. So it is not going to be exclusive or restricted to a specific platform..
But there are some prevalent questions, The times have changed and with so many information providers covering bollywood and specially news channels focussing in bollywood news like never before, will “Lehren” channel be able to make its own space. Also will there be any freshness in terms of content and style as most of the bollywood coverage by competition is almost on the same structure established by Lehren. Will they follow there own model or comeout with something new and refreshing?
But I am looking forward to “Lehren” TV for one reason. They have thousands of hours of archived footage of the bollywood of mid 80s and later and unlike DD they know the value of it and I am hopeful that they do comeout with some real good programming (specially with archived footage/interviews of of Pancham, Kishore Kumar, Big B and many more legendary artists).. Atleast their portal lehren.tv is a good indication towards that..
Looking forward to the launch of the channel..
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
And a color tv was a status symbol. In many places.. if someone in their neighborhood had a color tv, then everyone would gather around.. some people would try to catch a few glimpses through the windows…
Anyway, why do we need an another Entertainment news channel when all the current news channels only concentrate on entertainment side?
eggzactly.. so many news channels concentrating on entertainment slide and yet coming out with such lousy and unsatisfying content… unsatisfying specially for “passionate for cinema” viewers..
there is a strong possibility Lehren could well become one of them, who cares then.. anyway it cant get worse than what others are offering..
but the brighter side is still we can hope for some good content.. atleast their website is offering some good ones..
in early 90s, there was another video magazine on bollywood “face to face”. perhaps promoted by TIME video group.
Yes. Their video’s on youtube are quite famous. I have watched and downloaded a few interesting ones. Also on their youtube homepage, last year, they were advertising that they wanted reporters and editors and what not :d
Great news, Pavan Bhai.
Me too Lehren nostalgic.
I sooo used to follow lehren…they were one of the leaders in Bollywood news..but, the sad part is, when they started, Bollywood was going thru crap…
they had different segments, like On the sets, Muhurat, Music Launch, Interviews etc…nostalgic, indeed
Lehren had a very good and lively interview of Amitabh Bachchan, where he speaks about a controversy regarding a song, Bappi Lahari, LP, Hum etc. and another one at his home where he speaks fluently in his shudh Hindi.
Lehren should have very good data bank having surprising events and interviews of late 80s and early 90s.
Not many know this man – Mritunjay Pandey….he’s the one who use to have a company called Multichannel…formed with some 4 or 5 people …Jhamu Sugandh was once his partner..they all parted when the comapny started failing and they owed lakhs and lakhs to DD and Mr.Pandey paid off all his partners, took over the co and declared himself bankrupt! He shut and many who worked for him day and night did not get paid…to some he owed in lakhs…those people who worked for them day and night went through some terrible times and now he goes on to start a channel on Bollywood…True, behind every great fortune there is a crime! pl do not exult too much as it’s going to be a channel for dummies with the lowest IQ and understanding about films..it’s not going to be ‘passion for cinema’ on TV! If he does something like that then it would be great…my respect for him will come back..but I doubt. BTW, he is not the only one who is coming out of with 24 hr channel on bollywood…there’s another one coming….from NDTV Imagine…exclusively for Bollywood!