MUMBAI: Dominating the English news genre from early 2018 with Republic, Arnab Goswami is ready to take on the bigger Hindi news genre now. The Goswami-led network is launching a free-to-air (FTA) Hindi news channel, Republic Bharat in a cluttered market of more than 20 channels. The network’s target is to reach 150 million people on day one.
The channel will launch on 2 February at 6 am. Goswami believes that being FTA will give it a huge advantage over other existing pay channels. TV Today Network’s Aaj Tak has been the market leader in this category for quite some time. “I don’t think rural audiences will watch pay channels any more. So, compared to pay channels like Aaj Tak we have a huge advantage,” he says.
Talking about the Hindi news genre, Goswami says, “The differentiator is simply the fact that, the Hindi news channels, especially the so called leading channels, have given up on news. I don’t see any news on Hindi news channels and they only produce all kinds of strange programming and then call themselves news channels. These channels show vulgar dances, lewd performances and make shows out of it. I don’t think there are any news channels in Hindi today. We are the first news channel in Hindi today. All other news channel used to be news channels may be 15 years back.”
The campaign of the channel is around the theme of nationalism with the line ‘Rashtra Ke Naam’. Goswami boasts, “We are already number one in terms of perception before our launch and I think, everybody in the Hindi news space has understood that the number one player has come and we have had a fantastic response.”
The necessary government permissions for the channel came through in the last quarter of CY2018, but the network decided to wait for a concrete editorial plan to be in place. The timing to launch the channel right before the elections is also likely to benefit it.
For the state elections of 2018, he claims that the network saw equal amount of people tuning in on virtual screens and TV. “We are doubling the reach rather than eating into the reach. We have a team of 150 dedicated reporters. We have strategic alliances with CVoter and Jan Ki baat and are spending the money because we are building the brand and are entering the market to be the leader,” he says.
Viewers will now get to watch Goswami on primetime on both Republic and Republic Bharat.
This is the first channel of the network in for which the entire design and production is being done in-house. The channel will deploy massive technologies in terms of news gathering and will also include this in news presentation later. For now, the focus will be on using high-end technology for uplinking from different centres.
“From our perspective, the changes in the tariff regime, whether they are implemented or not, we are really agnostic and we will support any regulatory structure that the government proposes to bring in. We are not going to be impacted by any changes in the present regulatory system and we are prepared to comply either which way,” he concludes.
