TV channel Approval statistics 2000-2009 – Over 500 Approved TV channels and 150 more in queue

With Indian Media space getting into enormous transformation, Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has released some interesting facts on TV Channels and their approval statistics. Recently Ambikani Soni, Minister of I&B, wanted to cap the numbers of TV channels in the country citing spectrum space crunch reason but it was not well received in the parliament.Year 2000, just had 1 new TV channel — Aaj Tak approved and the following 5 years (2001 – 2005) had 15 – 45 channels approved…. Year 2008 saw double the number of TV channels approved compared to the previous and the following year.The total number of TV channels being beamed into Indian homes is over 500 currently, and at least 150 more are in the queue. I&B minister Ambika Soni had recently written to the chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, asking whether there was a need to cap the number of channels in the context of scarce spectrum availability. In this context, new TV Channel approval statistics data over the past decade released by I&B Ministry is really useful.