he business of religion has never been small. And it�s getting bigger all the time, especially on TV. ZEE launched its religious channel, Jagran, at the start of 2004. And the Times group has one of its own coming up later this year. Basically, much action in the heavens.

The interest is not new, says Pramod Joshi, general manager, AASTHA, which claims to be the first in the genre. Doordarshan used to telecast the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. "Channels, in-cluding STAR, ZEE and Sony, have had spiritual programming in the morning for a while now. This phenomenon has simply grown into full-time channels," says Joshi. ... more