ITV

Tag: Rajat Sharma

  • Rajat Sharma to set ‘Chunav Manch’ agenda on 15 Oct, grill leaders

    Rajat Sharma to set ‘Chunav Manch’ agenda on 15 Oct, grill leaders

    MUMBAI: Gujarat, the state which is inarguably the epicentre of contemporary Indian politics, is gearing up for Assembly Elections 2017. With the confirmation of a strong participation from all major political forces in play, Ahmedabad the nerve centre of the state is all geared-up to host India TV Chunav Manch, channel’s flagship Election Conclave.

    The political fervour has started to grip none but all across the country like never before – to say the least the upcoming elections in Prime Minister’s home state are almost seen as run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections. To capture the rising political fever in the state and to keep the viewers on the top of the news spectrum, nation’s leading news broadcaster India TV has announced Ahmedabad edition of “Chunav Manch – full-day Mega Conclave”.

    India’s foremost news personality, India TV Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma shall lead the charge to set the agenda of the long eventful day. He along with his team of leading India TV Anchors shall grill the political big-wheelers who shall be present for the occasion. The landmark conclave shall unofficially mark the commencement of a hugely anticipated high-decibel campaigns by all major political parties in the state.

    India TV Events have always been recognized for excellence both in terms of execution and participation. As being rightly anticipated, the Ahmedabad edition of Chunav Manch shall host an impressive set of dignitaries along with nation’s & state’s top political stakeholders.

    Amongst those who are most likely to be present for the day include – Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, BJP President Amit Shah, Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani, Former CMs – Anandiben Patel & Shankersinh Vaghela, Congress Leaders Ahmed Patel & Arjun Modhwadia and Political Activist Hardik Patel.

    India TV MD Ritu Dhawan announcing Chunav Manch – Ahmedabad said, “As a leading News Channel, our primary responsibility towards our viewers is providing them with rich content together with maintaining a healthy share of original content in our programming mix. We are simply fulfilling our Brand promise.”

    “As I have held in the past as well, we compete only with ourselves and given the benchmarks we have been able to create, going forward is always a motivation,” she added.

    Chunav Manch – Ahmedabad is scheduled for 15 October 2017 and will be telecast live on India TV through the day.

  • New NBA president Rajat Sharma to strive for healthy competition in fraternity

    New NBA president Rajat Sharma to strive for healthy competition in fraternity

    MUMBAI: There’s change at the top at the News Broadcasters Association (NBA). And returning to the helm of the news television collective is India TV founder & chairman Rajat Sharma who has been elected as the president for 2017-2018.

    The bespectacled soft spoken-but-hard-questioning Sharma had served as the NBA president from 2014 to 2016. So he is quite familiar with the challenges that the NBA leadership brings with it.

    “As the new president, I take the opportunity to reassure members that we shall walk together in bringing in more credibility and independence to the news broadcasting industry,” said Sharma. “I shall put in my best efforts to make the fraternity more accepting of our contemporaries, striving for healthy competition.”

    He was the last president to serve out his full terms at the NBA. He was replaced by then ABP chief executive Ashok Venkatramani for 2016-2017. When Venkatramani departed ABP News as CEO last year and stepped down from the presidency mid-way, his shoes at the NBA were filled by India Today group CEO Ashish Bagga. Bagga too left India Today a couple of months ago and the NBA was president-less since.

    Mathrubhumi Printing & Publishing whole-time director MV Shreyams Kumar has replaced Times Now MD & CEO MK Anand as the vice-president, even as News24 Broadcast India chairman & managing director Anurradha Prasad was elected as the treasurer.

    The NBA has also elected other members to its board. Among them: M.K. Anand, NDTV group CEO & executive vice-chair person K.V.L. Narayan Rao, TV18 Broadcast CEO news & group editor in charge Rahul Joshi, Zee Media executive director & COO Rajiv Singh, ABP News Network COO Avinash Pandey and Eenadu Television director I Venkat.

  • Punit Goenka re-elected IBF president

    Punit Goenka re-elected IBF president

    MUMBAI: The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) has re-elected Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited managing director Punit Goenka as the president for the second consecutive year.

    The IBF board members also elected K. Madhavan (Asianet Communications), N. P. Singh (Sony Pictures Network), Rajat Sharma (India TV) and Sudhanshu Vats (Viacom 18 India) as vice-presidents of the foundation for the second consecutive term.

    Aroon Purie has been elected as the treasurer of the foundation. The board also co-opted Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi S. Vempati as the director on the board.

    The new president Punit Goenka said, “This places a huge responsibility on my shoulders to steer the sector through challenges and complexities. I look forward to the support of each and everyone in the fraternity to collaborate with the government and other regulatory bodies to provide an enabling environment to conduct our businesses in a transparent and goal centric manner linking it inextricably to the India’s media and entertainment sector growth story.”

  • Virender Sehwag starts new innings with India TV’s sports show

    Virender Sehwag starts new innings with India TV’s sports show

    MUMBAI: Virender Sehwag is all set to start a new innings with India TV’s sports show Cricket Ki Baat will now have him on its expert panel.

    Known to be an ultra-aggressive batsman throughout his illustrious cricketing career, Sehwag has created a similar image for himself off-the-field too. This image is to do with his happy-go-lucky style of cricket commentary and carefree tweets those often create flutter amongst the Twitterati.

    A visually ecstatic Sehwag on beginning of his new innings stated, “I am delighted to associate with India TV as cricket expert. It is everyone’s dream to work for the channel that is led foremost news personality Rajat Sharma.”

    “I have always strived to further India’s pride through my cricket and this wasn’t possible without my fans. I am sure that I will be able to present my viewpoint on the nitty-gritties of the game to each of my fan with utmost honesty. I hope that my innings with India TV will prove to be a very successful and a memorable one,” he added.

    India TV MD Ritu Dhawan said, “We look forward to the fireworks the man is packaged with. We can’t be surer that with him on the panel, we have done the best possible job for our discerning audiences in terms of providing them with lively cricketing opinions.”

    The team behind the show Cricket Ki Baat is very upbeat with Sehwag’s entry on the expert panel and has lined up a flurry of specials with the legendry Cricketer, few of these are expected to be first of its kind on the News Television.

  • Hemant Sharma quits India TV, to pursue writing

    MUMBAI: India TV director — news Hemant Sharma has decided to take a sabbatical from his career.

    Confirming the news, India TV chairman Rajat Sharma said, “Hemant has had a long journey with India TV, and our best wishes are with him — always.”

    Sharma said, “I have decided to take a sabbatical for my first love — writing, but I will always be available to India TV.”

    According to BARC India data, India TV retained its fourth position in the Top 5 Hindi news channels list in week 29 and the latest week 30 with 80764 and 85316 Impressions (000s) sum, respectively.

  • Shah predicts bigger majority for Modi in ’19: India TV conclave

    MUMBAI: If the super-charged atmosphere, excitement, interactivity & the supreme participation is to be believed, India TV’s full-day mega conclave Samvaad seems to have again hit the right chord with the audience, even with its second edition.

    The who’s who from the corridors of power were seen participating passionately at the daylong Conclave held to analyse the three years of Narendra Modi’s government. Leading the pack was BJP president Amit Shah, fresh from his poll victories in UP, Uttarakhand, BMC and MCD elections. Shah went on to predict that even if the entire opposition united, the NDA led by Modi will secure a bigger majority in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

    Another headline came from Home Minister Rajnath Singh who hinted at the imminent possibility of another ‘surgical strike’. Surface transport minister Nitin Gadkari outlined his ambitious new projects. Textile minister Smriti Irani said that she would love to have a live debate with her Amethi rival Rahul Gandhi, while the law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad spoke of his government’s opinion of ‘triple talaq.’

    The afternoon session delved deep into the controversial issues, including a fiery debate on Ayodhya dispute, featuring MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and BJP leader Dr Subramanian Swamy and the Kashmir issue with pro-separatist lawyer Shabnam Lone crossing swords with J&K Deputy CM Nirmal Singh and Congress leader Manish Tewari.

    India TV editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma, along with channel’s leading anchors, grilled the illustrious participants including political heavyweights from the opposition benches.

    In his welcome address, India TV chairman Rajat Sharma outlined the highs & lows of the ruling regime, people’s expectations etc. while also drawing attention towards the charges made by the opposition, as he set the ball rolling for the day.

    MD & CEO Ritu Dhawan on India TV delivering yet another hugely successful Event said, “We are immensely pleasured by the type of unparalleled participation we manage to get for our initiatives.”

    “Not only does an effort like this touches the audiences in the best of the ways, this gets multiplied with the scale of the differentiated sets we specially create. This eventually becomes an intellectual and a visual treat for our audience,” she added.

  • India TV’s ‘Samvaad’ to take stock of Modi’s three years of governance

    MUMBAI: India TV that has made a mark with its outstanding on-ground initiatives is back with its Political Mega Conclave ‘Samvaad’. The same shall coincide with the completion of three years of the Narendra Modi led Government in office. ‘Samvaad’ shall be held in New Delhi on 15 May 2017.

    With this Full-Day affair and in its true role of being democracy’s fourth estate, Nation’s true News leader India TV is set to question the establishment to bring to fore the facts that matter to the masses in general and to specific strata of the businesses, society or nation in particular.

    This top initiative shall be about not only taking toll of ‘the change’ the present dispensation has been able to bring in from when they picked up the baton of Governance in May 2014 but also ‘measuring its performance’ against their manifesto. Samvaad shall also strive to highlight the agenda and expectations for the remaining term of two years.

    India TV Chairman & Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma shall lead the charge along with his team of Premier Anchors to put to test the regime that arguably enjoys the strongest public support even in the distant times, despite large-scale non-populist decisions effected.

    It’s a given that like all previous India TV on-ground initiatives this Conclave too shall be a spectacle with a galaxy of the biggest political decision makers and influencers from both ruling & opposition benches muscle it out.

    An impressive gathering of high profile delegates including top Corporate honchos, Media personalities and other Newsmakers from across the country shall add a most anticipated layer for the avid political watchers & analysts through this initiative.

    Political bigwigs like Amit Shah, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, Nitin Gadhkari, Dharmendra Pradhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Rajiv Pratap Rudi are not only expected to come and but make some big rippling statements that may be of the prime interest for the electorate of world’s biggest democracy.

    Influential leaders from the opposition camp including Raj Babbar, Pramod Tiwari, Renuka Chaudhry, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Manish Tiwari amongst others. Other top dignitaries expected to attend include Subramanain Swami, Mehbooba Mufti, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Mohammad Salim, Badruddin Ajmal, Zafar Sareshwala and Dr. Nirmal Singh etc.

    India TV MD & CEO Ritu Dhawan while announcing the second edition of the initiative said, “If I put it in most simple terms, our friends from the media fraternity can most certainly expect big headlines that would obviously mean a big political news feed for our audience.”

  • India TV instals dLive mixing system to manage broadcast connectivity

    India TV instals dLive mixing system to manage broadcast connectivity

    MUMBAI: India TV, one of the country’s leading Hindi news channel, has invested in Allen & Heath’s flagship dLive S Class digital mixing system to manage audio connectivity in its state-of-the-art broadcast centre. Part of the Independent News Service Private Ltd., India TV has a reach of over 90 million viewers, and its programmes have won several prestigious awards.

    India TV, with investment from ComVentures, a top Silicon Valley venture fund, and a leading private equity entity, has created benchmarks in innovation, impact, ratings, time spends, and viewer-support. Indeed, India TV’s newsbreaks have inspired talk shows on rival channels, Bollywood films, BBC documentaries and articles in Time Magazine, even Amul hoardings.

    As part of an audio refurbishment, Rajat Sharma-led India TV was keen to install dLive as a permanent mixer in the studio, selecting the S7000 Surface and DM64 MixRack.

    Created for professional touring, broadcast and prestige installations, dLive S Class has earned its reputation for audio quality and robustness in the most complex and high-profile applications.

    “My team is very impressed with Allen & Heath’s sound quality, and the S Class dLive system has huge IO capacity, enabling them to manage the increasingly wide network of channels,” explains India TV technical general manager Ajay Seth.

    “The dLive surface is very user friendly and we did not face any issues transitioning from analogue to digital, and the powerful 96kHz processing core provides amazing headroom and extremely low latency, which is an ideal environment for broadcasting. Also, the user-defined bus architecture is a big bonus. dLive completely outshone the competition!”

    Also Read :

    Zee Media’s WION opts for Dalet unified news solution

  • India TV instals dLive mixing system to manage broadcast connectivity

    India TV instals dLive mixing system to manage broadcast connectivity

    MUMBAI: India TV, one of the country’s leading Hindi news channel, has invested in Allen & Heath’s flagship dLive S Class digital mixing system to manage audio connectivity in its state-of-the-art broadcast centre. Part of the Independent News Service Private Ltd., India TV has a reach of over 90 million viewers, and its programmes have won several prestigious awards.

    India TV, with investment from ComVentures, a top Silicon Valley venture fund, and a leading private equity entity, has created benchmarks in innovation, impact, ratings, time spends, and viewer-support. Indeed, India TV’s newsbreaks have inspired talk shows on rival channels, Bollywood films, BBC documentaries and articles in Time Magazine, even Amul hoardings.

    As part of an audio refurbishment, Rajat Sharma-led India TV was keen to install dLive as a permanent mixer in the studio, selecting the S7000 Surface and DM64 MixRack.

    Created for professional touring, broadcast and prestige installations, dLive S Class has earned its reputation for audio quality and robustness in the most complex and high-profile applications.

    “My team is very impressed with Allen & Heath’s sound quality, and the S Class dLive system has huge IO capacity, enabling them to manage the increasingly wide network of channels,” explains India TV technical general manager Ajay Seth.

    “The dLive surface is very user friendly and we did not face any issues transitioning from analogue to digital, and the powerful 96kHz processing core provides amazing headroom and extremely low latency, which is an ideal environment for broadcasting. Also, the user-defined bus architecture is a big bonus. dLive completely outshone the competition!”

    Also Read :

    Zee Media’s WION opts for Dalet unified news solution

  • 9X Media sale: Pradeep Guha & Rajat Sharma rubbish reports

    9X Media sale: Pradeep Guha & Rajat Sharma rubbish reports

    MUMBAI: The entities that were said to be involved in acquisition talks have no clue about the development. It seems to be pure speculation.

    The media and entertainment industry was since morning rife with speculation that India TV promoter Rajat Sharma is acquiring a controlling stake in the New Silk Route (NSR)-backed 9X Media. Reports emerged in the last few hours that also state the value of the deal was Rs 200 crore (Rs. 2,000 million).

    9X Media’s CEO Pradeep Guha, however, rubbished this news. He told Indiantelevision.com, “All the reports are absolutely rubbish. We are not selling 9X Media.” When Rajat Sharma was contacted, he retorted: “I have no idea where these reports are coming from. I am out of the country. All these reports are absolutely false.”

    Though, Sharma has been keen on evaluating several opportunities to diversify the business portfolio of Independent News Service, which depends entirely on advertising revenue from India TV, acquiring 9X Media is not in his list. Yet. Sharma and his wife Ritu Dhawan are the largest shareholders of INS, which is the parent company of India TV. They own close to 60 per cent stake in the company.

    According to reports that are making the rounds in the industry, Sharma may seek help for the fund transaction from existing investors in INS like the Silicon Valley-based media investor Keyur Patel who also owns a stake in NDTV through his CV Global Holdings, a Mauritius based investment arm.

    NSR was earlier looking to sell its 80 per cent stake in 9X Media to Sony Pictures Networks in August. Its CEO Pradeep Guha directly owns five per cent stake whereas 9X Media Employee Trust has a 13 per cent stake. NSR has Drag Along/Tag rights over Guha’s shareholding and can cause him to sell his entire holding if the transaction materialises.

    9X Media was founded in 2007 by Peter Mukerjea and Indrani Mukerjea and owns a bouquet of music channels that include regional language channels in Marathi and Punjabi. Its flagship channels are 9XM and 9X Jalwa.

    The rise of India TV as India’s leading news channel within a fairly short span of its existence owes a lot to the vision of its chairman and editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma who, along with his wife Ritu, leads a team of professionals.

    Sharma, considered close to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, co-founded India TV with his wife Ritu Dhawan in April, 2004 from a swanky studio-cum-office in Film City, Noida. Sharma and Dhawan had set up their own production house, Independent News Service (INS), the parent company which owns India TV, in 1997 that has now transformed into a broadcasting company — a la NDTV and TV18/Network18.