ITV

Tag: Rani Reddy

  • News TV industry gears up for 4th News and Television Awards and Summit

    News TV industry gears up for 4th News and Television Awards and Summit

    NEW DELHI: The news television industry is gearing up for the most prestigious Indian News Television (NT) Awards and Summit.

    Currently in the fourth year, the NT Awards is conducted by Indiantelevision Dot Com to recognise and honour news channels and professionals in the country.

    And continuing the tradition, this year also the awards have been judged by the peer group – senior members of the news industry as well as eminent personalities. Over 100 jurors were part of the judging process.

    Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari said, “Indiantelevision.com is delighted to present the fourth News Television Summit and Awards at a time when the news industry is working on its commitment to get its house in order. The challenges are plenty because of the diversity of news channels. We are grateful for the fantastic response we have received from the Ministry, the industry, the jurors and our efforts in trying to create the definitive recognition for excellence in performance in the news television. We look forward to growing the awards further in the coming year with the support of the industry.”  
         
      In all, 800 entries were received for 32 categories. The awards will be announced at a glittering ceremony on 17 March at Hotel Ashok in New Delhi from 6.30 pm onwards.

    The NT Awards will be preceded by the Fourth News Television Summit, which will be held at the same venue earlier in the day. The theme of the summit is “News Television: Juggling to get the right mix.”

    Endorsed by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, the summit will aim to get a government perspective and address the ever-growing issue of regulation. Co-regulation or self-regulation, the big brains behind the news media and government will trash it out at the summit.

    This year Indiantelevision.com has also added the Marathi News channels to the summit and will debate the issues related to that space.

    The panellists include Ashok Venkatramani (Star News), Anuranjan Jha (CNEB News), Anurradha Prasad (News24), Barun Das (NBA, Zee News), Dinesh Akula (TV9), G Krishnan (TV Today), Jehangir S Poncha (NewsX), Kanwar Sandhu (Day & Night News), Mandar Phanse (IBN Lokmat), PN Vasanti (CMS Media Lab), Pranjal Sharma (Bloomberg UTV), Punitha Arumugam (Madison Media), Shazi Zaman (Star News), QW Naqvi (Aaj Tak), Rani Reddy (Saakshi TV), Kumar Rajesh (Maurya TV), Rajiv Khandekar (Star Majha), Sanjay Salil (Media Guru), Simen Haagenrud (Vizrt), Vinay Tewari (CNN IBN) and Yogesh Radhakrishnan (MNDIL).

    The NT Awards will have categories that will cover programming and personality awards. The NT Awards will be presented to channel programmers, anchors, presenters, technicians, producers, editors, reporters and management. Also, this year NT Awards will honour the excellence in the Marathi TV news industry in addition to the Hindi, English and Telugu industry.

    Auditing the awards is Ernst and Young. The jury meetings were organised in Mumbai, Hyderabad and New Delhi.

    Star News and Star Majha are the Summit Gold partners while Vizrt, CVB News Service, Day & Night News, NDTV, Sakshi TV, TV9 and Media Guru are Silver partners. Morya TV is regional partner and Sahara News Network, CNEB, Manthan, CNBC TV18 and CNBC Awaaz are support partners.

    Avishkar, Cable Quest, Satellite@Internet India, Satellite & Cable TV are print partners and Save the Children is the cause partner of the event.

  • Telugu TV news market needs to consolidate amid clutter

    Telugu TV news market needs to consolidate amid clutter

    NEW DELHI: Consolidation is the only way forward to beat the clutter in the Telugu news channel space, senior industry experts said.

    With 12 Telugu channels crowding the marketplace and jostling for a share of the Rs 1 billion ad market, there can be space for only the top three players in the long run. Distribution costs are also wreaking havoc as politicians and real estate owners are busy launching news channels.

    “The news consumption in Andhra Pradesh is much higher as the state witnessed many events in 2009. A lot of infrastructure and political players are pumping money which can create ripples in the market. TV9, however, sits pretty with an almost 50 per cent share in revenues,” said TV9 Editor – Input Dinesh Akula, while speaking at the NT Awards summit.

    The session, “The Telugu News Titans,” was moderated by Indiantelevision.com founder and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari.

    Having invested Rs 1 billion in setting up the infrastructur (including HD), Saakshi TV will take longer to break even. Saakshi TV marketing director Rani Reddy, however, said there is no political affiliation and the news operations is run like an independent business. Incidentally, Saakshi TV comes from the house of Saakshi Telugu daily owned by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy.

    “We launched during recession and we came with our eyes open. We invested on HD because we wanted to be ready for the future. The newspaper business is run as a profitable venture. We have the same approach in the TV news segment,” said Rani Reddy.

    Talking about the slowdown and non-serious players in the market, HMTV’s Editor-in-Chief K Ramchandran Murthy accepted that they had not anticipated the market would get so cluttered. “We are in the serious news business and staying away from any type of sensationalism. We believe that will lead to our success,” he said.

    On the content front, Zee 24 Ghantalu channel head Shailesh Reddy said that as the Telugu industry is mainly cinema and entertainment driven, the viewer wants to watch news in a movie style format. “When there are so many players, you have to do more value addition. Let the viewer decide if it is news in entertaining format or sensationalism,” he said.

    Akula raised the concern that there are copycats in the market and there is no innovation. “Some players just copy the graphics and tickers even. What can you do? We need training centres to teach journalism. Lots of people with no understanding have become journalists overnight and are getting obscene salaries,” he pointed out.

    Distribution is a big hindrance. Said Murthy, “Some MSOs are even dictating content. They threaten to block the channel if you show any news against their political connections.”