The television industry in India is very diverse and produces thousands of programs in many of the Indian languages. More than half of all Indian households own a television. As of 2016, the country had over 857 channels of which 184 were pay channels. The Hindi, Tamil and Telugu language television industries are by far the largest television industries in India. History In January 1950, The Indian Express reported that a television was put up for demonstration at an exhibition in the Teynampet locality of Madras (now Chennai) by B. Sivakumaran, a student of electrical engineering. A letter was scanned and its image displayed on a cathode ray tube screen. The report said that "It may be this is not the whole of television but it is certainly the most significant link in the system" and added that the demonstration of the sort could be the "first in India". The first TV transmitter of India was installed in the Electronics and Telecommunications engineering department of the Government Engineering College, Jabalpur, on 24 October 1951. In Srinagar, television was first used in the house of the Jan family, which was a huge milestone for industrialization. Terrestrial television in India started with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi on 15 September 1959 with a small transmitter and a makeshift studio. Daily transmission began in 1965 as a part of All India Radio (AIR). Television service was later extended to Bombay (Now Mumbai) and Amritsar in 1972. Up until 1975, only seven Indian cities had television services. Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was an important step taken by India to use television for development. The programmes were mainly produced by Doordarshan (DD) which was then a part of the AIR. The telecast happened twice a day, in the mornings and evenings. Other than information related to agriculture, health and family planning were the other important topics dealt with in these programmes. Entertainment was also included in the form of dance, music, drama, folk and rural art forms. Television services were separated from radio in 1976. National telecast was introduced in 1982. In the same year, color television was introduced in the Indian market. Indian small screen programming began in the early 1980s. During this time, there was only one national channel, the government-owned Doordarshan. The Ramayana and Mahabharata, both based on the Indian epics of the same names, were the first major television