The History Of Star Life's Predecessor Life OK

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Before Life OK this was the channel back in 2001

Star One was a youth entertainment channel owned by the defunct News Corporation which inturn was owned by Star India and FOX International TV channels which are both properties of The Walt Disney Company under the brand Disney Star.

During its run, the channel produced several Bollywood productions including Detective Omkar Nath (D.O.N.), Miley Jab Hum Tum, Shakuntala, Home Shanti Home and shows formerly seen on Star Life like Geet and to some extent Koffie With Karan.

The introduction to Life OK

In 2011, it was announced Star One would be replaced by Life OK from December 18th as part of an attempt to bolster their offering to take on the likes of Sony which was ahead in terms of viewership. With the new channel onboard came a set of original programming.

The channel introduced several shows viewers would have come across in its current form or at the English version which is Star Life like Forever Yours (Your Paakhi) that formed part of the incarnate initial offering alongside other series like Pukaar - Call For The Hero and Dream Girl.

Life OK expansion to Africa, exit in the region and elsewhere

Life OK just like StarPlus and a few other channels expanded to various European markets with Africa fortunate enough to get Life OK as a replacement to Channel V on the StarTimes platform.

Interesting enough, Life OK performed poorly with its audience I mean for a "Hindi" entertainment channel to cater for an English audience made a whole lot of sense especially with StarTimes bulk of Indian entertainment.

In 2017, Life OK was replaced by Star Bharat again still reserved as a youth brand and the reasons for the demise of Life OK were more or less similar to that of StarTimes I mean Bharat also the platform produce a selection of content with reruns of StarPlus series.

Conspiracy theory about Star Life

Although there's sufficient evidence of the channel's connection to Life OK despite both being owned by Disney Star. Pay attention to the wording "Star Life" and "Life OK" I mean it can't be coincidence.

Life OK was often referred to as "Star's Life" OK and as mentioned notice how Life exists on Star Life I mean how would Disney Star have been able to come up with such a name.

I mean the idea of Star Life being based on a reject doesn't seem far fetched I mean Warner Bros. Discovery's Real Time and competitor Zee Enterprise's Zee One were all based on rejects which became relevant to viewers in Africa.

Development Hell: The Pending The Third Season To Star Life's The Evil Eye

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The Evil Eye was the first and one of the few attempts Africa got to supernatural on Star Life alongside A Magical Love Story which came amidst a pandemic with the second season was also filmed in such a climate.

Since its abrupt end, some viewers can't stop boasting about the show that it got to a point where they advertised fake repeats and even listed Bengali adaptation Nojor (pictured above) as The Evil Eye season 3.

Ever since A Magical Love Story ended, there hasn't been a site of venomous snake or anything supernatural on Star Life even on Zee World as regional stations are the closest to viewing them dubbed while others are distributed in their original language with subtitles.

 

Amidst the phasing out of these shows sources state that Star Life picked up Bold And Beautiful and The Evil Doom which were scheduled for a late 2021 to mid 2022 release which never came to pass.

Joining that trio was the fake third season of The Evil Eye which is now considered a new season but supposedly on a new Indian entertainment channel that was set to replace Star Life.

This supposed channel was said to focus on Bengali which is similar to Hindi in an attempt to "differentiate" the offering from StarPlus but hey some of the content from Bengali are remakes to the Hindi content and vice versa.

 

The thing about this was Disney Star the owners of these brands already operated a Bengali channel Star Jalsha which is niche I mean every market has their niche. In South Africa, it is Tsonga, Sepedi and Siswati as Zulu, Afrikaans and Ndebele dominate the region.

The question would have to be why trade one group for another if the plan was to replace wouldn't it be better to source areas like Telegu, Tamil and Malayalam as they also reside in the Bollywood community under the Disney Star.

Zee TV had every chance to launch such a channel but instead opted for reruns channel, Zee One.