There is no correct mechanism to decide broadcast carriage fee: Kartikeya Sharma
In an era where television news has become synonymous with noise, Kartikeya Sharma, Founder and Promoter of iTV Network is working overtime to bring some sense to this otherwise chaotic medium. In an interview with exchange4media, Sharma argues for redefined viewership mechanism and why 2018 will be the year of news channels.
News X recently launched one of the biggest investigations into Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) by kicking off a 100-day campaign, how has been its impact been so far?
We have been working on this campaign not after the Nirav Modi, issue but for the last couple of months. This campaign highlights one of the biggest problems that has plagued India for long, especially involving public sectors banks. The question is: why are we having NPAs of this size in public sector banks and not in the private sector? So obviously, something is wrong somewhere. As far as the impact that this campaign has created, we have got very encouraging response and even the ratings have shown up very well. More than ratings it’s about people and getting people to realize that it is their hard earned money that is going waste, and we will keep launching such investigative campaigns regularly.
There is an ongoing debate about news lacking impact. How are you addressing this issue? Also, what are the three biggest challenges that news broadcasters are facing today?
I think news is fast becoming a victim of social media, and rightfully so. But investigative journalism really goes a long way in defining impact and our new campaign has shown how news can create real impact. As far as the challenges in news broadcast are concerned, I would say there are major ones. Firstly, there is no correct mechanism to decide broadcast carriage fee, which is still a very grey area, and the second, is trying to understand and evolve with the phenomenon of digital media. The third and final one is having a more robust mechanism for getting correct viewership numbers. For a country of our size, if we look at how many meters will represent the English speaking audience, we definitely need a larger representation sample size as I don’t think the current reflection is good enough to represent all aspects of different genres.
What are some of the new strategic shifts that News X is planning this year and how future ready are you making your newsrooms?
We are bringing back the basics of journalism and we have a very young and enthusiastic team which represents young India. The focus is on creating impactful content and sticking to the fundamentals of news broadcast and we believe that will go a long way for us. As far as being future ready is concerned, I believe that ultimately we are all content providers and content creators. The modus operandi of delivery in terms of platforms and intermediaries will change and evolve; however the ability to create the right kind of content which clicks, will hold the key for players who will stay relevant and we are focusing on that.
With general elections due next year, 2018 is seen as the year of news channels, how do you plan to leverage this biggest news event?
I don’t know about others but I can speak for myself. There is no doubt that this year is going to be big for us because not only have we launched two regional news channels in the last six months, which is Punjabi and Gujarati, but we are also going to launch News X Kannada which will be our first foray into the Southern linguistic market. The idea is to be hyper local and this will be the 11th channel from the ITV stable. Before the general elections, we are looking to launch a few more news projects all across the country, in the regional language space especially. There is no doubt that elections mark an important time for news channels to grow and new news products to come out, and that is exactly what we have planned.
We have been working on this campaign not after the Nirav Modi, issue but for the last couple of months. This campaign highlights one of the biggest problems that has plagued India for long, especially involving public sectors banks. The question is: why are we having NPAs of this size in public sector banks and not in the private sector? So obviously, something is wrong somewhere. As far as the impact that this campaign has created, we have got very encouraging response and even the ratings have shown up very well. More than ratings it’s about people and getting people to realize that it is their hard earned money that is going waste, and we will keep launching such investigative campaigns regularly.
There is an ongoing debate about news lacking impact. How are you addressing this issue? Also, what are the three biggest challenges that news broadcasters are facing today?
I think news is fast becoming a victim of social media, and rightfully so. But investigative journalism really goes a long way in defining impact and our new campaign has shown how news can create real impact. As far as the challenges in news broadcast are concerned, I would say there are major ones. Firstly, there is no correct mechanism to decide broadcast carriage fee, which is still a very grey area, and the second, is trying to understand and evolve with the phenomenon of digital media. The third and final one is having a more robust mechanism for getting correct viewership numbers. For a country of our size, if we look at how many meters will represent the English speaking audience, we definitely need a larger representation sample size as I don’t think the current reflection is good enough to represent all aspects of different genres.
What are some of the new strategic shifts that News X is planning this year and how future ready are you making your newsrooms?
We are bringing back the basics of journalism and we have a very young and enthusiastic team which represents young India. The focus is on creating impactful content and sticking to the fundamentals of news broadcast and we believe that will go a long way for us. As far as being future ready is concerned, I believe that ultimately we are all content providers and content creators. The modus operandi of delivery in terms of platforms and intermediaries will change and evolve; however the ability to create the right kind of content which clicks, will hold the key for players who will stay relevant and we are focusing on that.
With general elections due next year, 2018 is seen as the year of news channels, how do you plan to leverage this biggest news event?
I don’t know about others but I can speak for myself. There is no doubt that this year is going to be big for us because not only have we launched two regional news channels in the last six months, which is Punjabi and Gujarati, but we are also going to launch News X Kannada which will be our first foray into the Southern linguistic market. The idea is to be hyper local and this will be the 11th channel from the ITV stable. Before the general elections, we are looking to launch a few more news projects all across the country, in the regional language space especially. There is no doubt that elections mark an important time for news channels to grow and new news products to come out, and that is exactly what we have planned.
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television
