As India’s biggest business house Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) goes through the motions of formally taking complete control of one of India’s biggest TV networks, Network 18, the veteran journalist and commentator Kuldip Nayar writes in Deccan Herald: “I was not surprised when television channels did not cover the taking over of a large TV…
Tag Archives: Network 18
‘Media freedom bleaker with Ambani domination’
The takeover of Network 18 group with its myriad news, business and entertainment channels has received scant review in the Indian media, but the author Pankaj Mishra bells the cat in Bloomberg View: “There is no denying that the future of media freedom in India looks even bleaker than ever after Mukesh Ambani’s Silvio Berlusconi-style…
Operation Rajnikant: starring Samir & Vineet Jain
There are 12 media personalities in the Indian Express list of the most powerful Indians in 2014—“ie 100″—for 2014, but 10 of them are proprietors, only one is a journalist and the other is a former journalist. As usual, the most interesting part of the prospective list are the factoids accompanying the profiles. # 19,…
Network 18’s right-wing swing on Caravan cover
The December issue of Caravan magazine has a 16-page cover story on how the Raghav Bahl founded Network 18 has taken a turn towards right-wing politics after its takeover by Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance Industries. Headlined ‘The Network Effect’ and written by Rahul Bhatia, who authored the Arnab Goswami profile last year, the article chronicles a…
WaPo, Amazon, HT, and the Reliance-TV18 deal
There was plenty of buzz about the Washington Post building being sold to shore up the books. But when the paper’s staff was convened for a meeting on the afternoon of August 5, they were in for a shock: the family-owned newspaper itself was being sold. The sale, to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com,…
POLL: Should FDI in media be enhanced?
With the economic downturn threatening to turn into a full-blown recession and with the finance minister reduced to going around the world with a hat in hand, the Congress-led UPA government last week increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecom, defence, petroleum refining, etc, but… But, not the media. On the issue of enhancing FDI…
How Narendra Modi buys media through PR
In the latest issue of Open magazine, its deputy political editor Jatin Gandhi lays his hand on a “Request for Proposal” (RFP) document of the Gujarat government that shows how “almost every day, the Indian media—and sometimes the foreign media too—is tricked or influenced by Narendra Modi‘s public relations machinery”. Exempli gratia: “Modi’s Rambo act,…
Udayan Mukherjee out, Shereen Bhan in at CNBC
The following is the full text of the press release issued by Network 18 of leadership changes at the group’s flagship channel, CNBC-TV18. This comes just a few weeks after four Forbes India editors were forced out of the group. Insiders say there is more coming as new owner Reliance Industries (RIL) seeks to stamp…
Steve Forbes named in Forbes India legal notice
Three of the four Forbes India editors, who were forced out of the fortnightly business magazine allegedly for demanding that the promoters fulfill their contractual commitments on employee stock options (ESOPs), have shot off legal notices to Network 18 and Forbes Media, demanding immediate reinstatement and settlement of dues and damages for loss of livelihood,…
‘Can the media find a middle ground on Modi?’
CNN-IBN editor in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai in his nationally syndicated column, in the Hindustan Times: “The mainstream media has always had a more uneven relationship with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Modi’s acolytes would like to suggest that the mainstream media has always been anti-Modi and has hounded the BJP’s rising star with a ferocity that…
Forbes purge is a ‘freedom’ issue: Editors Guild
The editors guild of India has reacted to the “termination” of services of Forbes India editor Indrajit Gupta, and the “resignation” of his colleagues Charles Assisi, Shishir Prasad and Dinesh Krishnan. The guild has termed Network 18′s summary decision as lacking in “elementary courtesy” and that it cuts at the “very root of editorial independence”.…
Bombay Press Club blasts ‘Forbes India’ purge
The Press Club of Bombay has reacted to the “termination” of services of Forbes India editor Indrajit Gupta, and the “resignation” of his colleagues Charles Assisi, Shishir Prasad and Dinesh Krishnan by the magazine’s India franchisee, Network 18. The Club has termed the manner of the dismissals of the four journalists “nothing short of shameful”,…
How the ‘Forbes India’ editors were forced out
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The abrupt exit last week of the top four editorial heads of the business magazine Forbes India, including of its editor Indrajit Gupta, has swung the spotlight once again on the questionable—but rarely ever questioned—human resources (HR) policies and practices in Indian media houses. In this case, one of India’s…
Shekhar Gupta storms into India Today powerlist
Thirteen out of India Today magazine’s 2013 ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India have interests in the media, but only two of them (former Indian Express editor Arun Shourie, Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta) are pure-play journalists. The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey…
‘Network 18’s multimedia Modi feast, a promo’
As news channels bend backwards to give flight to Narendra Modi‘s prime ministerial ambitions, the Indian Express‘ television critic, Pratik Kanjilal, writes on the Mukesh Ambani-controlled Network 18‘s unquestioning schmoozefest with the Gujarat chief minister: “Modi also addressed a business forum in Kolkata, but the big one was the multimedia love-feast organised by Network 18.…
The sudden rise of media mogul Mukesh Ambani
Mukesh Ambani (left) went to sleep last night as India’s richest man and woke up this morning as also India’s biggest media mogul. That, in a nutshell, is the sum and substance of the dramatic announcement by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) that it was getting into a tie-up with Raghav Bahl‘s Network18. The tie-up means…
Why hasn’t India thrown up a media mogul?
Indian media houses, promoters and practitioners are gung-ho about foreign direct investment (FDI) in all sectors except the media, under the specious argument that the media is not a “commodity”, etc. Media barons who justify the worst excesses of modern Indian media under the this-is-what-the-consumer-wants logic, somehow find it convenient to block FDI in media…
Rajeev Chandrasekhar picking up Eenadu TV?
For a paper which turns its nose at news about the rest of the media, The Times of India has a strange item on its business page, news of the mobile phone entrepreneur turned member of Parliament, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, evincing some interest in Ramoji Rao‘s Eenadu television chain in Andhra Pradesh. The ToI report comes…
‘If we don’t get it first, why should we want it?’
Network 18 bossman, Raghav Bahl, receives some loaded questions from Sunil Jain of the Financial Express, in an interaction with journalists of the The Indian Express group: Sunil Jain: The SEBI chief [M. Damodaran] once spoke of “anchor-investors”. Also, how do you justify your getting into private treaties? Raghav Bahl: On “anchor-investors”, I never quite…
Fortune India and Forbes India in numbers
Much anticipated and much delayed, Fortune, the business magazine from the Time Inc stable, has finally made its India debut, in collaboration with Aveek Sarkar‘s Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) group, 16 months after the launch of the Indian edition of Forbes in collaboration with Raghav Bahl‘s Network 18 group. # Forbes India periodicity: fortnightly Fortune…
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