CBS AND RELIANCE TO CREATE INDIAN CHANNELS

CBS is coming to India. The network’s production arm, CBS Studios, is teaming up with India’s Reliance to launch Big CBS Prime next month, with two other Indian channels in the planning stages, Big CBS Spark, targeting a youth audience, scheduled to debut in December, and Big CBS Love, targeting women, set to premiere in February. The new channel has a mix of CBS Studios-produced entertainment fare, ranging from the daytime shows Rachael Ray and Judge Judy to long-running NCIS, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Survivor to relative newcomers The Defenders and Blue Bloods. CBS, which, like its network rivals ABC, Fox, and NBC, operates no independent channel overseas, but the Indian operation appears to be the closest thing to one. In an interview with an Indian website, Exchange4Media.com, Aparnaa Pande, who has the title of “business head” for Big CBS Networks, said, “With a fabulous line up of the best shows from the U.S. … [we] will offer unmatched and unparalleled entertainment to audiences in India, as we grow the English television entertainment space.”