Star TV is eyeing the rural Indian market to expand its viewer ship base. One of the strategies chalked out by the management in India is to offer franchise to long distance telephone operators in the rural areas.
 Star TV India has also designated some marketing personnel to penetrate the rural market with the C-band digital bouquet consisting of some 10 channels.

booth operators helping them access funds of investments and appointing them as franchisees of Star TV.
 The findings of the survey of the rural market and the STD/ISD booths is likely to be submitted towards the end of the first quarter of this year.
 The source said that the strategy to appoint Star TN franchisees in rural areas in an initiative which may take some time to be put in place, if it gets off the ground.
"But tapping the rural market to expand the viewership base is a certainty.

The idea be hind having franchisees in STD/ISD booth operators is that people visiting such booths in rural India and smaller cities will have access Star channels especially Hindi programming through TN sets in the booths.
"Star India is also getting a study done on the rural market

The means to do that may differ," the source said.
 Star India's rural initiatives come at a time when its allyturned-competitor, Zee, has gone ahead in building up a strong bouquet of channels appealing to regional national and international viewers.

and collecting data in the STD/ISD booths in rural India to ascertain the feasibility to the marketing initiative, " a top Star source said.
 The Star TV management feels that the rural viewership can be wooed, specially through regional language news. " News is something for which even villagers are hungry" the sources said adding " What better way to lure them to our channels than airing regional language news on Star News and making it freely available throughing the right king of STD/ISD

 But star India is certainly diversifying into areas connected with broadcasting, including Interne