In 2000,
Doordarshan and later
Star TV's former head, Rathikant Basu, established TARA, which stood for
Television Aimed at Regional Audiences. The network comprised four regional television channels in Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Marathi languages, all of which besides the Bengali one have shut down because of financial losses. On 21 February 2005, Tara exited the general entertainment genre due to stiff competition from its rivals, such as
ETV Bangla and
Alpha Bangla, and split Tara Bangla into two television channels,
Tara Newz and Tara Muzik, devoted to news and music programming respectively. Within less than a month after its launch, Tara Muzik had the second-highest viewership among Bengali-language television channels in India, behind only ETV Bangla. In 2010, Saradha Group acquired the two channels from Broadcast Worldwide, which owned the Tara television network. According to general manager Indrajit Roy, Saradha Group, the owners of the three channels, were no longer willing to fund them. However, Tara Muzik resumed broadcasting as there was a campaign to save the three channels from shutting down, until the channel itself ceased doing so on 12 May 2013. Later, West Bengal's chief minister,
Mamata Banerjee, announced to acquire both Tara Muzik and Tara Newz, but a
TRAI order banning Indian state governments to acquire television channels halted the acquisition. ==Programming==