MUMBAI: The stage is set for the launch of Sahara Samay. Starting 28 March, 'Sahara Samay National' Hindi news channel and 'Sahara Samay Uttar Pradesh', the city-centric satellite news channel, will broadcast their fare seven days a week - 24 hours a day.    
Sahara India Pariwar's broadcasting arm had announced its ambitious plans to launch a slew of of television news channels some time ago. Sporting the new true blue patriotic logo's on the screen, the test run of the first two Sahara Samay news channels to be launched has been on air for the last two weeks.

While ace television personality Vinod Dua, who had been associated with Sahara TV since its inception, is an advisor to the whole project, other important cogs in the team include Sahara Samay National news channel head Arup Ghosh; Sahara Samay city-centric regional news channels for UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan head Prabhat Dabral; Delhi & NCR channels head Shireen; and Mumbai channel (covering Maharashtra & Gujarat) head Rajiv Bajaj.
An official release says that the besides the rest of the news channels in the bouquet, Sahara's media initiatives also include television, print and satellite radio channels.
While the Sahara Samay National will cover the news nationwide, Sahara Samay Uttar Pradesh - a city-centric regional news channel will cover news from six cities namely Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Agra, Gorakhpur and Dehradun. Meanwhile, Sahara's media and entertainment head Sumit Roy announced: "Other city-centric channels will be launched in the next four months to cover all 31 cities as planned."

All Sahara news channels are free-to-air digital satellite channels. The release claims that the news channels employ advanced automated electronic news production and state-of- the-art transmission technology.
According to the release, the Sahara Samay news channels will offer in-depth news coverage from far and wide with a team of over 1000 journalists using 50 main news bureaus which will be further connected with the 1600 V-SAT centers for news gathering across the country. In addition to a fleet of 18 OB Vans, DSNG vans and fly-aways to offer quick on-the-spot live coverage, the channels have also employed a round-the-clock helicopter team round-the-clock for special aerial coverage.