Zee Entertainment официально закрыл каналы &Prive HD и Zee Chitramandir

New Delhi: Zee Entertainment has formally closed &Prive HD and Zee Chitramandir, bringing the regulatory process for discontinuing the two movie channels to an end. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s Broadcast Seva portal lists the uplinking and downlinking permissions of both channels. The reason recorded against each cancellation is Zee’s request to close the channels. The formal cancellation follows Zee’s decision earlier this year to remove &Prive HD and Zee Chitramandir from its Reference Interconnect Offer released on March 1, effective April 1, 2026. BestMediaInfo.com had reported on March 2 that the absence of the two channels from the revised RIO indicated that Zee was preparing to shut them down as part of a wider restructuring of its television portfolio. &Prive HD: The premium English cinema experiment ends &Prive HD was launched on September 24, 2017, as Zee’s premium high-definition English movie channel. The channel entered the market with the proposition “Feel the Other Side” and was designed for viewers looking beyond mainstream Hollywood blockbusters. Zee positioned it around films with strong storylines and performances, targeting adults aged 25 to 50 in the NCCS A segment across six metros. It went on air with the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight and launched with a library of more than 350 titles, including 40 critically acclaimed premieres. Zee had described the intended viewer as non-conformist, discerning and willing to explore cinema outside the obvious choices. The channel was part of Zee’s attempt to build a layered English movie portfolio, with different brands serving mainstream and premium cinema audiences. However, the economics of English entertainment and movie television weakened significantly over the following years as audiences shifted towards streaming platforms. The closure of &Prive HD is part of Zee’s wider withdrawal from English entertainment on linear television. Zee Café and &Flix were also taken out of their earlier English entertainment roles and repurposed as Unite8 Sports channels in SD and HD. BestMediaInfo.com had earlier reported that the English entertainment genre had lost more than 60% of its viewership and 90% of its subscribers after the tariff reset, while advertising revenue fell by more than 75%. Zee’s shift to sports reflected the stronger commercial potential of appointment viewing, sponsorships and event-led content compared with imported entertainment libraries. Unlike Zee Café and &Flix, which were given new identities and moved into sports, &Prive HD has not been repurposed. Its cancellation marks the end of the brand’s nearly nine-year linear television run. Zee Chitramandir: A five-year Free Dish play Zee Chitramandir was launched on April 9, 2021, as Zee’s second Marathi movie channel after Zee Talkies. The free-to-air channel was created specifically for the DD Free Dish market and aimed to reach around four million Free Dish households in Maharashtra. At launch, Zee said nearly one in every three rural households in the market had a Free Dish connection, leaving room for a dedicated Marathi movie offering. Zee Chitramandir entered the market with a library of more than 600 Marathi films. Its schedule was designed to curate titles across genres and dayparts, catering to different viewing moods and entertainment requirements. The channel was also intended to expand the reach of Zee’s Marathi cluster, which then included Zee Marathi, Zee Talkies and the music channel Zee Vajwa. Zee had said the addition of Chitramandir would help the cluster cover around 70% of the Marathi market. Its launch also reflected the advertising opportunity that broadcasters saw in rural and free television households at the time. Zee positioned the channel as a way for advertisers to reach consumers outside the pay television ecosystem through a large regional movie catalogue. Part of a wider portfolio reset The two closures sit within a broader reshaping of Zee’s channel portfolio. Apart from converting its English entertainment assets into sports channels, Zee has been changing the positioning of several movie brands. Zee Picchar was renamed Zee Power, while Zee Bangla Cinema became Zee Bangla Sonar. The broadcaster also moved Big Magic away from its earlier free-to-air positioning for a planned pay Hindi movie play. The changes show Zee concentrating its linear television resources around larger regional brands, pay television and sports, while withdrawing standalone services whose economics or audience proposition no longer justified continued operation.