Post Elections, T20 and Union Budget high on Hindi news channels’ agenda

Many Hindi news channel editors are often quoted on saying that it is not easy to feed this “24-hour giant”. The elections, and to some extent even the Indian Premier League (IPL) season two, was supplying the news channels enough content to feed the 24-hour demands of the genre. As both these properties have concluded, next on the chasing list of the Hindi news channels are the T20 World Cup and the Union Budget.

Zee News’ Editor, Satish Singh, observed, “We are very busy planning on the Union Budget coverage right now. We plan to present the budget innovatively for the benefit of the audience. We are soon also going to do innovative programs that would be based on real news stories. We have some fresh thoughts on this, which I cannot reveal right now.”

Singh also explained that state elections in Maharashtra would also add to the news content space in days to come, and special programming on T20 Cricket. “We have specially called Mohinder Amarnath for show on that,” he informed.

Vinod Kapri, Managing Editor, India TV, informed here, “Next on our agenda is the Union Budget. We want to connect the common man to the budget, and make it simple for him. India TV has lined up experts who would help viewers understand the budget and its implications.” He also informed that during elections, the channel had launched ‘Top Ten reporters’ and that the response for this was good. “We have decided to continue with that property. We have also started T-20 in the morning, which is the top 20 news of the day in 20 minutes,” he added.

Live India too would be focussing on T20 World Cup, ad also on the Delhi admissions. Sudhir Chaudhary, Editor & CEO, Live India, explained, “We are focusing on T20 World Cup and our team is in UK to cover the event. We have named the property ‘World War T20’. We are also doing a special series on college admissions called ‘Mission Admission’. We are also planning for the rail budget and the union budget which is in first week of July. That would be a big event for us too. On a longer term planning, there also is the Maharashtra election, which is few months away now.”

Kishor Malviya, Group Editor, VOI TV, said, “VOI is looking forward to covering the Budget Session, wherein we would be focusing on how the budget would be affecting recession. We would also be covering the State Elections due in October/November.”