Pogo TV

Pogo TV logo used during their Robot Wars airings
Channel Information
Years Active	2004-2015
Robot Wars Information
Market	India
UK Series	4 (Lohe Ka Waar version)

Pogo TV, sometimes stylised as POGO TV, is an Indian television channel owned by WarnerMedia. It was responsible for airing Series 4 of Robot Wars under the title Robot Wars: Lohe Ka Waar.

History

Pogo TV launched on 1 January 2004 as a sister channel of Cartoon Network, the Indian counterpart to the US animation channel of the same name. In common with its sister channel, it primarily broadcasts animated series aimed at young audiences along with a variety of live-action shows.

Pogo TV's logo since 2016

With the arrival of a new graphics package in 2016, the channel's logo would undergo subtle changes. The blue and green colours were made slightly lighter, and the rounded edge of each shape was squared off.

Nowadays, Pogo TV broadcasts its own original Indian series, as well as popular American and other imported shows. As well as India, the channel covers Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Pakistan. Pogo TV has a large social media following, with over 240,000 people liking their Facebook page.

Robot Wars

"Robot Wars features remote controlled robots, whose ultimate aim is to beat the mechanical innards out of each other in a brutal fight to the finish. The competitors come from all walks of life - schools, universities, buisnesses and industry, right through to the man in the street. What they all have in common is a flair for designing deadly machines!"

— Pogo TV's official description for Robot Wars: Lohe Ka Waar

Though it is unknown exactly when Robot Wars: Lohe Ka Waar (translating from Hindi as Robot Wars: Iron Blows) aired on Indian television, Series 4 of the show was listed on Pogo TV's website in May 2011, which also included links to watch a selection of clips via a Flash player. Thumbnails for those included images from battles such as Chaos 2 vs Atomic (Heat A), Razer vs Milly-Ann Bug (Heat B), Gemini vs The Creature (Heat F) and Killerhurtz vs Eric vs Destruct-A-Bubble (Heat I); a link with an additional image of Robochicken from Heat B suggests that these may have been individual battle clips rather than complete episodes. The listing was removed in January 2016.

Pogo TV advertising ''Robot Wars'', featuring the unique Lohe Ka Waar text

One confirmed airing of Robot Wars on Pogo TV was on 11 October 2014, occupying a 1:30pm slot on a Saturday afternoon. It is unknown whether this was a regular slot for the show, or indeed which episode was aired on this day.

Rather than the traditional lettered or numbered Heats to denote each episode in the original airing, Pogo TV instead numbered each episode, with Episodes 22, 23 and 24 relating to the Semi-Final 1, Semi-Final 2 and Grand Final episodes respectively. As the main competition of Series 4 had 16 Heats, and a similar system was later combined with individual titles on Mech+ streams of this series, it is likely that Pogo TV may have aired the Christmas Specials in between the Heats as was the case with the original BBC Two broadcasts. However, this is unconfirmed.

Robot Wars: Lohe Ka Waar as advertised on Pogo TV

The editing was also unique in this iteration of the show, as resurfaced footage of Razer vs. Milly-Ann Bug during Heat B features no commentary from Jonathan Pearce or arena announcements from Stuart McDonald. Instead, a horn sound was edited in to signal the start of the fight, followed by battle music and generic crowd noises. A safety disclaimer scrolls across the bottom of the screen during the fight, reading "These acts are carried out under expert supervision. Please do not try them at home." A different and repeating buzzer sounds as House Robots close in to attack competitors, evident when Shunt first attacks the immobile Milly-Ann Bug in the only remaining footage of Pogo TV's airing of Robot Wars.

Though they would not obtain the rights to show future series of Robot Wars, Pogo TV would air repeats of their edited Series 4 episodes for several years between 2011 and 2015.

External Links

• Pogo TV on Wikipedia