Non-news side of the equation will drive the news business: Rahul Joshi

“In the financial year gone by, the fight was to keep our heads above water — work hard, defy all the odds to grow mindshare and, in turn, our market share of viewership and revenues,” Network18 Group Editor Rahul Joshi has said in an email to his colleagues on the year gone by and the plans for the upcoming year.

e4m has a copy of this mail.

According to Joshi, “the news business is, to use a hackneyed expression, at the crossroads”. “As the cop who’s at the centre managing the traffic, SEO notwithstanding, I can clearly see a few trends that will define our news business,” said Joshi. 

He also highlighted that the non-news side of the equation will drive the news business.

“What’s brought the users in for us at Moneycontrol is news, what’s really kept them with the platform is the non-news business that we’ve built so successfully the tools and value-added services that help traders and investors stay ahead of the markets curve. Look around you -The New York Times is doing it with verticals such as cooking,” he added. 

Going forward the business will be driven by the creative renaissance of the news segment, Joshi said. “Latching onto the big story, scaling it up, doing it over and over again and then some, will take you only this far — March 31, 2024 — and no further.”  

“It’s likely to take you back a few years, in both viewership and revenues, like the print sector globally. Your content needs to be truly engaging. The overdose of political content has stopped working for the politicians, let alone our viewers. They’ve switched off the same programmes, the same debates, the same evening shows, the same tipsters in business news, the same long-format interviews. I ask all my top-flight anchor colleagues: are any of your friends watching you at 7, 8, 9 pm? Think about it.”

“The creative resurgence will have to be driven by the content we create and, by extension, the new revenue streams we open up,” said Joshi.

He further said that he sees the rise of a Bharat that’s growing fast in Tier 3 and Tier 4 towns and not just in metros and mini-metros alone. According to him, Viksit Bharat will soon find its way into the top 3 economies by the turn of the decade and aspires for global domination by 2047.

“Which only means that we have to build Local18—our hyperlocal initiative—into a news and non-news content play of the future. Alongside, as Indians crave for international news and citizens of other nations for India’s take on the world, we have to make Firstpost India’s global storyteller.”

He further mentioned that in this evolving world, as the dividing line between news and non-news becomes wafer thin, the need for top-quality talent becomes more crying than ever before. “It’s important to draw on talent from other walks of life in order to inculcate within the organisation the X factor that will make news tick once again. We must move our business away from the drudgery of routine and revitalise it with freshness and energy.”