ITV

Tag: BARC India

  • Republic TV continues to lead English News genre in week after debut

    BENGALURU / MUMBAI: Republic TV claims to have cornered a viewership of 49 per cent for week 20 of 2017 (Saturday 13 May 2017 to Friday 19 May 2017) on its channel. 

    According to BARC India’s weekly data, Republic TV has got 1703 impressions (000s) sums. Times Now with 978 impressions and India Today Television lagging far behind with 289 impressions took the second and the third positions, respectively. 

    Sharing viewership data for other channels, Republic TV states that Times Now had a viewership share of 30 per cent, followed by CNN News 18 and India Today with 7 per cent each. The other major English news channels – NTDV and News X had viewership share of five per cent and 0.6 per cent each, Republic TV claimed. It attributed the ratings to BARC India. 

    According to BARC India’s weekly report, CNN News18 with 281 impressions and NDTV 24×7 with 241 impressions took the fourth and fifth positions, respectively.

    According to data provided by Republic TV (for English News channels in BARC India week 20 ’17, Target Group: – NCCS AB M 22+, Time Band: 0600-2400, 13 May to 17 May’17, in India 1Mn+), Republic TV had 48.7% market share, with the highest average time spent per viewer was 09:29 mins. 

    The viewership of Republic TV was 160% higher than Times Now, 703% higher than CNN News18, 715% than India Today Television & 920% higher than NDTV 24X7. In mega cities, Republic TV had 52.1% viewership, with average time spent per viewers was 11.50 mins, while all other leading channels average time spent was 4.59 mins, according to Republic TV data.

    Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani said that the channel snuffed out competition in the second week of its birth reaffirming the Indian viewer’s choice.

    In India 1Mn+ (Time Band: 2100- 2300), Republic TV had 61% market share. The average time spent of Republic TV was 7.39 mins, while other leading competitor channels average time spent was 3.10 mins. In mega cities, Republic TV’s market share was 55.2%, with an average time spent per viewer was 07.10 mins more than the double of other competitor channels.

    In India 1Mn+ (Time Band: 2200- 2300), Republic TV had 68.7% market share, while Times Now had had only 16.6%, CNN News18 7.1%, NDTV 24X7 4.2% & India Today 2.6%. In mega cities, Republic TV had a market share 63.0%, with an average time spent per viewer was 07.14. Times Now’s market share was only 20.5% & time spent 2.20 mins per viewer. 

    In India 1Mn+ (Time Band: -2000-2400), Republic TV had 55.8% market share. It’s viewership was 238% more than Times Now, 546% more than NDTV 24X7, 937% more than India Today Television & 1379% more than CNN News 18. In mega cities, Republic TV’s market share was 51.5%, double than Times Now’s 25.2%, according to Republic TV data.

  • Republic TV insists it’s FTA, DTH platforms to charge subscribers for viewing?

    NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Republic TV continues to make news even as it reports views and news. Touted as the country’s truly free-to-air (FTA) news channel, however, what is surprising is that some DTH platforms have put a price on the channel and started charging subscribers accordingly a little over a fortnight after its launch.

    It all started last weekend when a gentleman posted on Facebook “Dus ka dum. #RepublicTV  starts charging Rs 10 pm (Power of 10. Republic TV starts charging Rs. 10 per month).” A flurry of posts — some of them sarcastic — for and against this move followed. We at at Indiantelevision.com decided to go back to  industry to get the real picture.

    In a nutshell this is the scenario: some of the DTH platforms in the country have decided to charge subscribers for Republic TV from a price ranging between Rs 10 and Rs 3 per month per sub; MSOs, at least the big ones, are still keeping the new kid on the block free for viewing, while on popular OTT platform Hotstar, one can sign in with a personalized email or one’s FB account to watch Republic TV for free.

    But, the news channel in question maintained it is still FTA.

    Tata Sky MD & CEO Harit Nagpal, while confirming his company has put a price on Republic TV for subscribers, told indiantelevision.com all DTH platforms are permitted to charge a minimal pre-decided rate for even FTA channels.

    While pointing out rates for FTA channels were fixed by the platform and placed on the website, Nagpal explained such a move (like that involving Republic TV) was permitted under the relevant tariff orders issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Though he did not dwell on the actual pricing, some subscribers have reported that Tata Sky is charging Rs 10 per month from its subscribers for Republic TV on ala carte basis.

    According to Videocond2h’s spokesperson, by definition FTA channels are supposed to be free, but there’s a cost that a distribution platform incurs on distributing a TV channel and which has to be recovered.

    Pointing out that there was “no compulsion” to give a FTA channel `free’ to subscribers, spokesperson explained, “The ala-carte price is Rs 3 for Republic TV. Pricing is a matter of continuous discussion on marketing feedback, fine tuning and how competition was doing. The channel might be free, but there is a cost to carry the channel on my platform. If I don’t get any revenue from the channel, how will I recover the (satellite) rental.”

    Though officially it could not be confirmed, but Airtel Digital TV too is charging Rs 3 per month per month from subscribers for Republic TV. As far as the Essel group’s Dish TV is concerned, a scroll from time to time is being run on channel number 771, Republic TV, highlighting that it channel will be available till  the first week of June as part of a free preview scheme, which makes it clear that the platform also may start charging subscribers sooner or later.

    When Indiantelevision.com got across to Republic TV for clarifications, a senior executive insisted on Monday that the news channel was FTA and had no plans to become a pay channel. The executive added that the company would reach out to DTH ops trying to “persuade (them) not to charge for Republic TV and to place it in the FTA package.”

    ALSO READ:

    Republic TV has 51.9% viewership in debut  week: BARC gives data to paid subs despite NBA’s request

    Indian English news channels boycott BARC’s viewership monitoring

    Republic TV, TRAI, NBA and the case of multiple LCNs

    BARC-NBA face-off: Experts feel ad agencies, TV channels will take individual call; resolution best option

  • Programming revamp benefitted News18 India, says editorial head

    MUMBAI: Hindi news channel News18 India, which undertook a revamp of its programming strategy few months back focusing on exclusive reports largely based on sting ops, has claimed that the plan is working as its ratings and viewership have increased.

    Some of the sting operations carried by News18 India after programming reboot included ‘ Operation Namak Haram’ that exposed top Pakistani film actors and singers living in India and their alleged involvement in black money deals; ‘Surgical Strike Ka Saboot’ involved a police officer in PoK or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir who admitted that strikes were carried out by the Indian Army on September 29, 2016 and ‘Operation Kaali Kursi’ that exposed bank managers of private banks willing to aid an undercover reporter in converting almost Rs. 70 million of old currency notes into new ones after demonetization late last year.

    Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, News18 India consulting editor Prabal Pratap Singh said, “The channel has grown exponentially since its re-launch. Several of our shows are consistently No. 1in their slots. This is a testimony to the content that we have been airing, which is in line with our channel’s philosophy  of `Danke Ki Chot Par’.”

    Singh said as the editorial head of the channel, his role is to help the team focus on issues that are relevant to India, especially those viewers who would be watching or tracking a Hindi news channel. “Focus on pertinent content and issues, relevant to our viewers, has ensured tremendous growth in our viewership,” he added.                      
    According to BARC India data of weeks 15-18, News18 India had an average weekly impression of 3634 (in ‘000) with a 16 per cent market share in the HSM megacities in NCCS 15+, which placed the channel one spot behind the segment leader Zee News that had a market share of 17.5 per cent during the period under review.  

    News18 India is part of the Network18 group that is controlled by Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries Ltd. Reliance acquired Network18 from its founder Raghav Bahl and his associates in 2014.

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  • BARC-NBA face-off: Experts feel ad agencies, TV channels will take individual call; resolution best option

    MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Now that English TV news channels have boycotted BARC India’s audience data and the measurement company hit back by saying it is not its job to sort out issues like usage of multiple LCNs by TV channels with an aim to increase viewership, what next? The twists and turns continue coming thick and fast in this soap opera, though the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has kept itself aloof unwilling to wade into the matter yet.

    Will this boycott continue for long? Or, is it just a passing protest where players concerned will kiss and make up after some time? Will BARC India continue to measure viewership of the protesting TV channels and not release the data? Can no data also result in lessening advertising revenue — in the long run? Will the government (not petitioned yet) and the regulator TRAI, which has already been asked to look into the issue by some stakeholders, intervene and on what ground?

    As some more dirty linen is expected to be washed in public over the next few days — an independent analytics company Chrome Data & Analytics Media has stated many Indian TV channels use the multiple LCNs route to spike viewership — questions swirl in the Indian media landscape.

    For the uninitiated, multiple LCNs is a technical term used by media industry to describe a situation where a TV channel, most of the time, pays cable distribution networks to place the particular channel — assigned a unique number in the EPG — under more than one genre aimed at increasing viewership numbers.     

    Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia chairman and CEO Ashish Bhasin is of the opinion that in the long run if there is no audience data of TV channels, it could “impact” advertisers’ decisions.

    “Ultimately any advertiser would want to know the return on investment and the only way to measure that, is to see the amount of money being spent by advertisers vs. how much viewership they were getting. If that (data) is not available, advertisers would get reluctant at some stage, “Bhasin explained, adding if the impasse was temporary, advertising revenue for TV channels may not get affected.

    According to IPG Mediabrands India CEO Shashi Sinha, absence of viewership data and its effects on advertising revenue of the protesting TV channels will largely depend on the way advertisers view the situation.

    “Each advertiser will make its own call. I can’t predict what will happen to the industry, but it’s an individual call (of advertisers and clients). They will go with their own metric. Some will say no data, no advertising, while some may happily advertise (in the absence of audience data),” Sinha pointed out, highlighting the fluid nature of the advertising industry.

    A veteran television news executive, who did not want to be named, said that the pull-out by the English news channels from BARC India is unlikely to affect the advertisers. “Even an advertiser knows that the whole TRP system was flawed despite a new regime aiming to keep the data robust and transparent. Viewership of 180-plus million TV households is difficult to measure on the basis of a few thousands of boxes for a country as big as India,” the TV exec argued.

    Echoing similar sentiments on the importance of audience data — or the lack of it — a chief executive of one of the TV channels that has decided to boycott BARC India said their move may actually clarify some issues.

    Pointing out that they expected ratings of Republic TV to be high for the next two weeks and hoping TRAI would crack down soon on the issue of multiple LCNs, the CEO, who didn’t want to be named, said, “If advertisers don’t really give a hoot whether we are part of ratings or not, then it’s great for us. Then we will know that BARC’s measurement is not that important for the entire TV industry. So, it’s actually a good thing that we have taken the decision to stay out of BARC as it allow us to measure whether BARC data is important to advertisers and agencies or not.”  

    However, not everybody believes that taking on BARC and boycotting the measurement company, a joint industry initiative, is a good idea.

    “I don’t think it is right for anyone, whether a GEC or a news channel, to say that we will not participate in the ratings system. As BARC was founded by all the constituents of the industry, it is BARC’s job to make sure ratings are available all the time to everybody. If anybody has issues with BARC reporting, then it should be taken up with BARC and the issue should be mutually corrected. Pulling out (of BARC) is not a solution,” Bhasin expressed his views.
    Another industry veteran Paritosh Joshi, who had been actively involved during the period BARC was being set up two years back, also did not agree that absence of credible data can benefit any player or the industry in general.

    Reacting to an observation made on Facebook on an indiantelevision.com report detailing the decision of a  few English TV news channels to boycott BARC, Joshi observed, “What the recalcitrant measurement subjects need to introspect on are the following two issues: how many times have they used multiple frequencies? How long will their advertising proposition survive without a credible, agnostic measure? Many of them (the boycotting TV news channels) also have print businesses and (they) can’t be oblivious to the havoc wreaked upon revenues by the absence of a readership measure for an indefinitely long period.”

    Even as the industry debates the pros and cons of such a data boycott, regulator TRAI is still to come out officially stating its views on this developing story, if a TV lingo is used, though it has been petitioned on the issue of rampant usage of LCNs or frequencies by TV channels not only by the News Broadcasters’ Association, but by an individual TV company too. TV Today Network has accused rival Times Now of  alleged distribution malpractices.

    What about the government that had actually officially blessed formation of BARC India to replace TAM India, which was a joint venture between AC Nielsen and WPP-owned Kantar Media? A source in the MIB, while keeping a distance from the developments of the past few days, said the matter involved TV news channels and BARC India and the government had nothing to say on the issue. Yet.

    Keep tuned in for more on this ratings soap opera, which has all the hallmarks of a serial that many an Indian GECs air on their networks.

    ALSO READ:

    Republic TV has 51.9% viewership in debut  week: BARC gives data to paid subs despite NBA’s request

    Indian English news channels boycott BARC’s viewership monitoring

    News channel controversy: BARC India fires riposte to NBA

    “Dual LCNs is not the best thing to do” — Chrome Data CEO Pankaj Krishna

    “The NBA is a toothless group,” says Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami

  • News channel controversy: BARC India fires riposte to NBA

    MUMBAI: The muck is flying thick and fast in the English news channel genre. Yesterday, the English news channel members of the News Broadcasters Association decided to pull out of the Broadcast Audience Research Council’s (BARC) viewership monitoring by removing its watermark from their channels. This followed the BARC’s decision to release data for week 19 despite the NBA urging it not to do so as debutante the Arnab Goswami headed Republic TV had resorted to dual and multiple LCN placement of the channel to pump up its viewership.
    The net result: Republic TV emerged as the leader in the genre beating back old time vets such as Times Now, India Today, NDTV 24×7, NewsX and CNN News 18.

    A short while ago, BARC issued a clarification to indiantelevision.com stating that multiple LCN placement is rampant in the news television industry and nobody can call the kettle black. Said it in a statement:

    “The fact is that this is a common distribution strategy among various TV channels, particularly News Broadcasters, to place their channels on multiple LCNs and across genres in the past, and they continue to do so even now.

    Based on information collected from various monitoring agencies we have seen that multiple English news channels on different occasions have placed themselves on multiple LCNs viz across 64 distribution networks during rebranding/revamp, across 16 networks during budget coverage, across 12 networks during UP elections etc. It has become a usual practice.”

    “We have a transparent policy on the matter of measuring channels, (which is available on our website http://bit.ly/2dllmIp). This policy has been consistently applied to all channels who subscribe to our measurement.

    “We are clear about our position – we measure viewership of channels basis their unique Watermark ID, irrespective of the platform the channel is available on or the number of instances within the platform. For channels having same watermark on more than one LCN, viewership gets aggregated and reported as a single channel and not multiple channels. BARC India neither monitors channel placements across the various DTH platforms/cable head-ends in the country, nor does it have the mandate to do so.

    “In the past, we have measured multiple LCN instances of channels as per our policy, and reported them as one channel and the same principle has been applied to our data released yesterday. BARC India is not the regulatory body for resolving issues concerning multiplicity of LCNs for a channel.

    “Ideally these issues should be sorted among broadcasters themselves rather than dragging BARC India into these.

    BARC India will continue to measure what India watches.”

  • Republic TV, TRAI, NBA and the case of multiple LCNs

    MUMBAI: The media went to town about Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV getting carriage in multiple genres (dual or multiple LCNs) on select cable TV networks across India. This followed reports that the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) had complained to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) about this so-called violation by cable TV MSOs of the quality of services regulations which were notified in early March 2017.

    TRAI, on its part, then sent out notices to the MSOs asking them to toe the regulatory line which states that “…each channel shall be listed under the respective genre of the channel as declared by the broadcaster under applicable tariff order or regulations …and one channel shall appear at one place only.”

    And, by end-16 May, many MSOs following pressure from the regulator gradually started pulling out the channel from other genres and placed it in one genre only – that of, news. However, sources indicate that Republic was not the only channel which resorted to seeding multiple feeds in different genres on cable TV networks.

    “For a long time, channels have been doing this — whether it is Times Now or CNN News18 or CNBC News18 or Headlines Today – almost every news channel has opted for this, and even GECs,” says a distribution professional. “It is a shrewd marketing ploy which has helped viewers find a channel easier as well as got a spike in viewership as multiple LCN placement tends to fox BARC India’s measurement. In fact, even this time, two of the popular English news channels did the same though no one has mentioned them, but with TRAI cracking down, even they have dropped the multiple channel feeds.”

    A source close to Republic TV questioned the NBA’s decision to write to the TRAI without approaching the channel’s management.

    “The thing is the existing clique of news channels is getting nervous about Republic’s spectacular launch and recall in the viewers’ minds. The ratings are expected soon and, for sure, there are going to be a few upsets,” says he. “Hence, they banded together against the debutant.”

    Indiantelevision.com reached out to BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta, and the official comment from the viewership ratings agency was that it would go ahead with the release of its data as usual. “BARC India measures viewership of TV channels on the basis of their unique Watermark ID, irrespective of the platform that the channel is available on, and number of instances, within that platform. For channels with the same WM ID, which may be available on more than one slot/LCN, the viewership reported is a combined one for all in BARC India weekly data,” BARC India stated.

  • Republic TV claims ‘stunning’ debut on Hotstar

    MUMBAI: New kid on the news block Republic TV has claimed it made a “stunning debut on Hotstar” crossing “a million viewers” within a day of its launch.

    In an official joint statement of Republic TV and Hotstar, the news channel announced it has “created leadership in the most coveted news audience in the country, the urban viewers”.

    Republic’s reach on Hotstar’s OTT platform exceeded that of the top English news channels on television, including Times Now, India Today TV, CNN News18 and NDTV 24×7 amongst both the urban M15+ audience as well as viewers in the top 60 cities in India, according to the statement put out by Republic TV, helmed by Arnab Goswami and funded, amongst others, by entrepreneur-turned-politician Rajeev Chandrashekhar, a vice-chairman of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that rules India.

    Claiming that it is a “dramatic announcement given the viewership benchmarks are from a single digital platform”, the Republic TV-Hotstar statement said the new news channel’s viewership figures exceeded that of “traditional news channels significantly”.

    According to the claims, Republic TV’s viewership percentage was 208 per cent of Times Now, 229 per cent of India Today, 311 per cent of CNN News18 and 254 per cent of NDTV 24X7. It further claimed that the comparisons are vis-a-vis TV figures that BARC India would collect within all-India 1mn+ towns, including mega-cities, for 22 April 2017.

    Indiantelevision.com is not in a position to independently verify the viewership figures submitted by Republic TV and Hotstar. BARC India, the country’s present audience measurement currency, has not yet come out with data relating to Republic TV and other Indian news channels for the period under consideration till the time of writing this report.

    Commenting on the matter, the official statement quoted Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan as saying, “This is an exciting start and is a testimony to the impactful launch of Republic and the strength of the Hotstar platform, which has become the de facto destination for young, digital India.”

    Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani said in the statement, “Republic will be the largest and most impactful news platform. We are excited to partner with Hotstar and bring in an entirely new audience to the Republic community. We are also thrilled to have taken a leadership position on debut itself. ”

  • BARC India to halt analogue measurement from July, up overall data collection

    NEW DELHI: India’s audience measurement company Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC India) will stop reporting on analogue TV homes’ data from 1 July 2017 with the exception of one State and will add homes with new boxes to augment data collection.

    “We will also stop reporting all analogue homes across the country with the exception of Tamil Nadu from 1July 2017,” BARC India CEO Partho Dasgupta told indiantelevision.com, adding that hopefully the South Indian state too would soon come within the ambit of normal measurement process.

    The move to stop collecting and make available analogue home audience data seems to be aimed at nudging distribution platforms to stop analogue signals and a big hint to TV channels that in a digitized India it was best to go the digital way.

    Dasgupta, who was interacting with indiantelevision.com in an exclusive interview on the occasion of BARC India’s second anniversary, while dwelling on temporary hiccups, said, “With the current digitization mandate for Tamil Nadu, hopefully, analoguereporting will also stop soon there too. All this may lead to some interim flux, but in the long term will improve robustness of our viewership data.”

    The Tamil Nadu-Government run Arasu Cable TV Corporation (TACTV) was granted provisional digital license by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in April 2017 to operate as a multi-system operator in the state. The late clearance was based on a rider that the MSO switches off analogue signals in the entire state within three months.

    As part of a wide-ranging interview, Dasgupta informed that BARC India’s annual exercise, which is also part of a government mandate, will also see new meter homes (called BAR-o-meters) added this calendar year.

    “This year we will see our (pan-India measurement) panel expanding from 20,000 to 30,000 reporting homes,” Dasgupta said, adding, “Combined with the newly added homes, we will also be seeding some new homes as part of our regular churn policy.”

    The government while giving clearance to BARC India, a joint venture amongst IBF, AAAI and the Indian Society of Advertisers, had made it clear that the number of homes used for data collection should reach 50,000 within a five-year period. BARC India’s predecessor was TAM India, a joint venture between global companies Nielsen and WPP-owned Kantar Media.

    Confirming an earlier indiantelevision.com new story on BARC exploring avenues to collaborate with Indian DTH platforms for return path data (RPD) to augment data collection, Dasgupta said, “We are trying to innovate (with) panel expansion by tying up directly with key DTH and digital cable operators to enable return path (audience) data.”       

    Without disclosing a time-frame for such data-boosting tie-ups with DTH ops, Dasgupta explained, “Our tie-up with DTH operators and MSOs for RPD is an attempt (to bring about more robustness). This will not only increase the number of sample panel homes, but will also make infiltration efforts ineffective. We will innovate more on the meter technology front.”

    Stay tuned for the full interview of Dasgupta, which will be on air soon.

    ALSO READ:

    BARC India in talks with DTH ops, MSOs for RPD to boost robustness

    Arasu gets provisional MSO licence subject to analogue switch-off in three months

    BARC EKAM: Learning online behaviour & ROI from specific campaigns will be easier, industry says

     

  • Republic TV buzzing with pre-launch teasers featuring ‘soft’ targets, issues

    MUMBAI: “Can the cocktail circuit media and Maoist sympathisers please stand up and name themselves?: Arnab Asks”. The latest tweet from Republic stated. With Arnab Goswami and his new project Republic TV, it cannot be the normal. Rather, true to his style, honed to a level of art, hype is the new normal and the pre-launch marketing campaign of his new venture too is no exception. 

    Now that Republic TV is set for a confirmed 6-May launch, Arnab chose to tease the audience, mostly comprising 20-40-year something who survive on high adrenalin, with a series of online ‘Wait, I am coming soon’ creative that highlight more Goswami the man than the actual fare, which, if people have forgotten, is news.

    A series of campaigns with catchy taglines like “Long time since we met….”, “Gaikwad has done it again…” and “Good Times has come to an end” are doing the rounds of social media on Republic TV’s FB page, Twitter TL and on LinkedIn posts — all targeting and featuring people who may be in the news for some reason or other.

    In the “Long time since we met….” video Congress party veepee Rahul Gandhi is featured, for example. However, Gandhi no longer conjures up most Indians’ fancies, what with the man and the party doing badly for the moment in national politics. Similarly, the Ravindra Gaikwad creative too is a tad tame as he owes allegiance to a regional party that seems to have lost its charisma vis-à-vis its bigger political ally. And, the one on king of good times, runaway liquor baron Vijay Mallaya too seems like an obvious one. The media created a hype over his arrest in London, which turned out to be a routine affair in the very long journey of his extradition to India (if that happens at all) and laughed at by the man himself via tweets from London.

    While critics have panned Goswami and Republic TV for choosing ‘soft’ personality-targets for his marketing campaigns, others have criticised him for failing to highlight real issues that media should be really seized of.

    Issues such as Article 370 in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir where BJP, along with its partner PDP, is in power or the financially beleaguered farmers from south India protesting in the Capital city, a few kilometers from the Parliament, over government apathy or the Rs 20,000 crore (Rs. 200,000 million) Ganga clean-up initiative that’s making little progress or why PM Modi’s Clean India campaign still has people scratching their heads or why pseudo-nationalists and patriots call for boycott of China-made goods, while the PM’s picture is used in an advertisement of digital wallet company that’s more than 40 per cent controlled by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba or was it correct to try rewrite science by saying a cow inhales and exhales oxygen or…many other such examples could have been taken up, but were not in favour of issues that were aimed at getting more eyeballs and create more noise.

    Still to be fair to Goswami, he cannot be faulted for not being true to himself and believing in a philosophy that, he feels, should be the norm instead of being a rarity — opinionated news instead of old school news shorn of opinions. The series of videos started hitting the social media platforms with the first one coming on 15 April where the star is sitting in his office with the voiceover ‘Dear Viewer’ setting the tone for the rest of the narrative.

    Goswami has had his share of controversies too in the lead up to the launch of his news channel and its digital avatar. First, BJP MP Subramaniam Swamy questioned the use of the world ‘republic’ for commercial use, citing Indian laws and forcing the name to be changed to Republic TV from just being called Republic. Then, the star anchor’s previous employers, the Times TV Network challenged him for trying to poach personnel and cautioned him against using his pet phrase — the nation wants to know — claiming IPR over it.

    Pointing out that he had received “another legal threat” from Times group, Goswami on social media took a high moral ground: “A media group has sent me a six-page letter threatening me with imprisonment if I ever use the phrase ‘Nation Wants to Know.’ They say they own the phrase. I have watched the nervous antics of this media group with amusement and horror for the last few months. Today, I am replying to them. I say: The threat of imprisonment will not deter me. Bring your moneybags and your lawyers, file the criminal case against me for using the phrase (the) ‘Nation Wants to Know.’ Do everything you can, spend all the money you have and arrest me. I am waiting right now in my studio floor. Come, enforce your threat.”

    In a recent interview with Indiantelevision.com, Goswami mentioned his company was facing problems in distributing the soon-to-be launched TV channel as some other news channels were allegedly offering MSOs and LCOs more commissions to not carry Republic TV on their distribution platforms. That the promoter of a big MSO, DEN Networks Ltd, along with his brother, is an investor in Goswami’s company gets failed to be highlighted by him.

    Though such one-upmanship does resonate with his target audience, it raises other questions too. Questions like why he did not raise a storm when one of his main investors had sent a legal notice to an online news site and forced it to take down a news article on the investor and his investments in Goswami’s venture?

    Some incumbent news channels and competitors of Goswami’s TV channel may not be saying it in so many words, but aren’t amused much. “We will not simply make noise. We will concentrate on good reporting, fact-checking and research,” said CNN News18 managing director Radhakrishnan Nair while speaking to Indiantelevision.com about the change in news presentations’ style in recent times.

    But don’t for a minute think that Arnab’s marketing advisors are playing a mindless game. Though the English news viewership universe may not be very big — according to BARC India, it’s approximately 1.5 per cent of the total TV viewership that has risen to 27.3 billion impressions as of Week 15 — it does cater to the middle class viewers. All these teasers — targeting ‘soft’ targets or featuring not-so-serious-issues — resonate widely with the target audience nowadays, bred on a staple diet of hyper-nationalism and on thoughts like a Congress-free country. Good or bad, such hype does create a buzz, apart from disruptions.

    So keep tuned in for Arnab-ism on the small screen and on social media.

    Also Read :

    Arnab’s ‘The Newshour’ lands Times Now in soup in UK

    Republic appoints Laqshya media group  as the OOH Agency

    Times TV gets into a gunfight with CNBC TV18 on Budget Day claims

  • NDTV considering sale of assets

    MUMBAI: NDTV is considering sale of assets, according to a BSE filing signed by Navneet Raghuvanshi on behalf of New Delhi Television Limited.

    NDTV, based out of 207, Okhla Ph-III, New Delhi, on 17 April wrote to the the Secretary, BSE Limited in Mumbai, and the asst. vice president, of the Listing Department of the National Stock Exchange of India, in Mumbai that as per the Company’s Code of Conduct for Prevention of Insider Trading, the trading window for dealing in the securities of the Company will remain closed from 17 April till the conclusion of 48 hours from the date of Board meeting of the Company that is being convened to consider, inter alia, potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary(ies) of the Company.

    In BARC India’s recent ratings report, NDTV 24×7 grabbed the third place with 328 Impressions (000s). In the English Business News genre, NDTV Profit and NDTV Prime were at the third position with 76 Impressions (000s).

    In a separate case, the central government had told the Supreme Court that NDTV India has not apologised but only sent a note over the alleged violation of telecast norms during the Pathankot attack, which is not acceptable. New Delhi Television Ltd earlier told apex court that it will not tender an apology for the coverage on 2 January 2016. On 3 November, 2016, the ministry of information & broadcasting (MIB) asked NDTV India to go off-air for a day for revealing sensitive details on the Pathankot attack.

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