World''s lst Bhojpuri channel by October

The world''s first Bhojpuri channel, Purva TV, would be launched in the first week of October. Addressing mediapersons here in the city on Sunday, promoter Gaurav Sharma said the 24-hour channel would offer Bhojpuri artistes a global platform to showcase their talent.

He said that the aim of the channel would be to promote Bhojpuri culture and heritage and present folk dance and music.

"Although spoken in eight countries, Bhojpuri has failed to gain regional status," he rued.

In the first phase, the channel would be beamed across UP, Bihar, Jhark-hand, Assam, Mumbai, Delhi and NCR. It would cover the rest of the country in the second phase and countries like Mauritius, Nepal and Suri-name in the third and last phase.

CEO and ex-director of Doordar-shan (Lucknow and Bhopal) Kul-bushan informed that stress would be laid on religion-based telecast in the morning and current affair issues. He also said that the Bhojpuri programmes, with a sprinkling of Hindi, would help the regional writers to come into the limelight.

As regards the issue, MD Mohammad Mansoor clarified that since the beam area offered was not matching the requirement, they opted for Russian Yamal satellite.