MUMBAI: ABP News Network (ANN) and BBC Global News India have received a TV channel licence each from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB).

While ANN got the MIB nod (uplinking and downlinking) for ABP Sanjha, a Punjabi news channel, the BBC was handed a licence (only downlinking) under the channel name CBeebies, a pre-school kids channel.

In January 2018, ANN had launched ABP Sanjha in Canada in partnership with Parvasi Media Group, a South Asian & Punjabi media group.

“There has always been a very strong demand from the Punjabi community in Canada for a channel that not just informs them about their homeland, but also connects them to it. This was evident to us through the fact that ABP Sanjha was already very popular on the VoD platform. And now with ABP Sanjha available 24x7 on both cable & online platforms, we are confident that the Canadian Punjabi community will finally get the content it has always desired and deserved,” ANN CEO Avinash Pandey had said at the time.

The news network also appears set to launch ABP Ganga, a news channel for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, on 15 April.

In February, the ANN had received four new TV channel licenses from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in February under the names ABP Andhra, ABP Ganga, ABP Kannada, and ABP Tamil.

Currently, the APB News Network operates four news channels ABP News (Hindi), ABP Majha (Marathi), ABP Asmita (Gujarati) and ABP Ananda (Bengali).

Altering its strategy under TRAI’s new tariff regime, the formidable news network has converted its pay channels to free to air (FTA).

Earlier, the news network bolstered its national editorial team with the elevation of Pankaj Jha to senior editor national and political affairs.