YouTube revamps Indian TV page as content soars

The Google-owned digital video site YouTube has updated its television shows page for India and revealed it now hosts over 19,000 episodes from over 300 national and regional TV programmes. The shows, catering for viewers in six languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and Punjabi - include those from major Indian broadcasters such as Sony Entertainment Television (SET), Viacom18's Colors, ImagineTV, Star India and Vikatan TV. Popular Indian programmes including Balika Vadhu, Ramayan, CID, Devon Ke Dev...Mahadev, Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, and Thendral can be found on YouTube. "We wanted to offer our Indian viewers an updated Shows page to help them better follow shows they love and discover new favorites. These 19,000+ episodes are just a start, so we hope we can keep delivering more and more content that viewers across India and around the world," the company said in a blog. The move follows the revamp of its Indian film page in November, which like the new TV shows page, now provides a genre-defined search option and highlights new and popular titles. At the end of 2011, YouTube claimed to offer viewers 1,500 Indian movies without charge.