India Daily Live: A case study on how not to run a news channel

The nine-month-old Hindi news channel, India Daily Live, has been struggling to survive in the recent past. The promises made by the channel at its inception seem to now fade away, according to industry hearsay. In such a situation, clouds of apprehension have started deepening in the industry regarding the future of the channel.

The channel's Editor-in-Chief Shamsher Singh resigned a few days ago. Inside sources revealed that the management was pressuring him to conduct mass layoffs, but he refused and put down his papers instead.

सिहर जाता हूँ ऐसे मैसेजेज को पढ़कर। @narendramodi @AmitShah @ianuragthakur @myogiadityanath ji कृपया संज्ञान लें।@PMOIndia @HMOIndia @myogioffice कहाँ जाएँगे ये,किससे मदद माँगेंगे।बुरा हाल है @samachar4media ज़बरदस्त घालमेल है। https://t.co/O43Hpgh2R1 pic.twitter.com/kOTF5j9v19

— SHAMSHER SINGH (@ShamsherSLive) February 15, 2024

मन विचलित कर देने वाला एक और बच्ची का मेसेज।@narendramodi @AmitShah @myogiadityanath @ianuragthakur @PMOIndia @HMOIndia @myogioffice इन्हें बचाएँ।@BJP4India @anil_baluni ऐसे चैनल चुनाव में कैंपेन के लिये आपके पास आयेंगे, संज्ञान में रखें बस। https://t.co/YTrXPTk9ns pic.twitter.com/seTnoOKcXw

— SHAMSHER SINGH (@ShamsherSLive) February 15, 2024

However, the management has shown the exit door to more than 40 employees in the last month alone. In the name of cost-cutting, many employees may also be asked to leave in the coming days. Many of these journalists are those who had left their established jobs in other channels some time ago in search of career upliftment.  Singh also shared on X about the requests he received after the layoff from the employees who had nothing to do with the top management's blunders.

If people associated with the channel are to be believed, the channel expanded after its launch to 109 employees, who are now being asked to leave. This channel has started preparations to close its bureaus in Mumbai, Bhopal, Jaipur, Jammu, Patna, Dehradun and Guwahati. In such a situation, preparations are being made to expel journalists from there also, due to which the number of journalists suffering from retrenchment may increase further.

Reliable sources have said the channel did so in the name of cost-cutting after it stopped receiving government advertisements. If these inside sources are to be believed, till now, the channel was receiving government advertisements from Punjab, which stopped after a few political ED raids. A similar situation prevailed in Jharkhand too.

Reliable sources related to the channel said on the condition of anonymity that till now Aditya Vashishtha and Sahil Mangala had the highest shares in this channel, and had spent about Rs 60 crore during its inception. Back then, Rs 20 crore was spent on team salaries and other expenses, Rs 18 crore was spent on distribution and about Rs 30 crore was spent on equipment and building. However, neither had any experience of running a channel.

When they felt that it would be difficult to run the channel at such an expense, they thought it best to part ways with it and sell most of the shares. It is believed that most of the shares of the channel have been sold for around Rs 65 crore, but this has not been confirmed yet.

It is heard that now there are preparations to run the channel on a low-cost model. This means that now much expenditure will not be made on the channel and it will be pulled only with the help of government advertisements as long as possible. However, no such announcement has been made officially yet.

Meanwhile, sources associated with the channel management have denied reports that the channel has been sold to someone. According to sources, the channel is running as it is and will continue to do so. The management even said that as far as revenue is concerned, the current owners of the channel had no previous experience in running it and the channel was also not running well, in such a situation, it was felt that the channel was incurring unnecessary expenses. 

CEO RK Arora also does not have much experience in running the channel. People who know Arora closely say that his specialisation is distribution with no experience in management and revenue. The channel never recruited a sales head and revenue head, and its marketing strategy did not appear to be anything special. Everything was handed over to Arora.

The question also arises when most of the advertisers do not know much about the channel, how will it be successful in generating revenue? 

Going by the situation, experts say that it was launched only in the name of starting a channel while ignoring most of the factors that contribute to launching and running a channel. For a news business it is necessary to focus on editorial. Experience matters a lot as one has to focus on strategy. 

The media business experts believe that many channels open with different names, but most of them neither focus on editorial nor offer differentiated content.

Lack of good marketing, deep market presence and good sales professionals also hinder the growth of these channels. 

Such channels keep sailing only with the help of advertising. In such a situation, as long as government advertisements are available, things look better and as soon as there is a crisis of advertisements, its burden starts falling on the employees.