How the cookie crumbles. In 2018, Zee group founder Subhash Chandra was India’s 27th richest man, his net worth valued at around Rs 35,000 crore. Business Standard reports that he now puts the value of his personal assets at Rs 9.85 crore, down from Rs 39.07 crore in 2015, as the group faces a mountain…
Tag Archives: Subhash Chandra
How Steve Bannon was shaping India’s shrill anti-China rhetoric on Zee-owned ‘WION’ and ‘Times Now’ even before the Ladakh intrusion
Steve Bannon, the former investment banker who was editor-in-chief of the right-wing US website Breitbart before he became a key architect of Donald Trump‘s 2016 presidential election victory, has been arrested, masked and charged with swindling nearly $1 million (approximately Rs 7.5 crore) in the name of building the wall on the US-Mexico border. But…
Who brought Subhash Chandra of Zee to his knees—‘The Economic Times’, ‘The Wire’, or that usual suspect, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries?
Who broke the story of the troubles of the Zee conglomerate which led to a notional crash in stock prices by as much as Rs 14,000 crore on January 25, which then led to its founder “Dr” Subhash Chandra‘s extraordinary mea culpa? Was it Mohit Bhalla of The Economic Times who set the stage more than a month…
At ‘Republic’ summit, there were (at the very least) 9 known BJP faces; 0 from Congress. Any wonder Arnab Goswami wants other news channels to boycott the party that boycotts him?
Mint, the business newspaper owned by the Hindustan Times group, has a four-page supplement of the first Republic Summit, hosted by the TV channel, Republic. The guest list, as evident from the photographs, is revealing of the channel’s moorings and impulses. Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Devendra Fadnavis, Sarbananda Sonowal, Anurag Thakur, Smriti Irani Farooq Abdullah, Praful Patel, Kamal…
For listed news companies, there is always an interview to push before a major event unfolds
Subhash Chandra‘s Zee has, like Raghav Bahl‘s TV18, always been a smart valuations player, forming subsidiaries, leaking information, etc to keep the stock in the news and drive its value up. In September 2018, Chandra gave a long, supersoft interview to The Hindu, apropos nothing, in which he railed against Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance Jio, even…
The media Marwari who’s a ‘proper Tam-Brahm’
After a long period away from the arclights, Viveck Goenka, the scion of one of India’s most influential newspapers, The Indian Express, is slowly bouncing into the main frame. He is now playing an increasingly hand’s-on role at his own paper, making key decisions; is seen at media events, is making his presence felt on…
Not just a newspaper, a no-paid-news newspaper!
It speaks for the level of distrust that the media has managed to earn for itself that the front page of the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar carries an emblem in Hindi (right) alongside the masthead, in the space usually reserved for ear-panel advertisements, proclaiming “No Paid News”. Two years ago, the Bombay newspaper DNA, in…
Subhash Chandra: 7 rules for media success
In the seventh anniversary issue of Outlook Business*, Zee TV bossman Subhash Chandra offers seven rules for success in the media: 1) Don’t take your position for granted: Even if you’ve been No.1 for a long while, always remember to guard your turf 2) Don’t ignore the rural market: Through its direct-to-home business, Zee reached…
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…
Why Aditya Sinha suddenly exited from DNA
Aditya Sinha, the editor-in-chief of the Bombay newspaper DNA has resigned, within weeks of former Times of India response chief Bhaskar Das joining the Zee group, which now wholly owns the paper. (Sinha’s departure had been preceded by the exit of K.U Rao, the long-serving publisher of DNA.) Coming at a time when the Zee…
12 media barons worth Rs 2,962,530,000,000
Twelve media barons in Forbes India‘s list of the 100 richest Indians are worth $54.6 billion, in other words Rs 2,962,530,000,000. There are five pure-play media barons in the Forbes list: Subhash Chandra of Zee (total worth $2.9 billion) at No. 22, Kalanidhi Maran of Sun ($2.8 billion) at No. 24, Indu Jain of The…
The Ambani brothers, TOI, Medianet & paid news
The “reverse-swing” done on Zee News by Jindal Steel is one of the most intriguing media stories in recent memory. The steel company says it is suing the Subhash Chandra-owned network for Rs 200 crore for the demand of Rs 100 crore in lieu of advertisements allegedly made by its editors, Sudhir Chaudhary and Sameer…
Zee News, Jindal Steel & silence of the media
Swapan Dasgupta on the silence of much of the media on the Zee News-Jindal Steel extortion case, in which the editorial staff of the Subhash Chandra-owned channel allegedly demanded Rs 100 crore in lieu of advertisements from the steel major to not publish stories in the coal scam, in The Pioneer, Delhi: “The media didn’t…
Rs 50 crore? Rs 100 crore? It’s all in the business
The coal scam claims its first journalistic victim: Zee Business from Subhash Chandra‘s Zee Network. The Indian Express reports a Rs 50 crore extortion claim from member of Parliament Naveen Jindal’s company for not doing a story. The Times of India pegs it at Rs 100 crore. Zee Business head Sudhir Chaudhary denies the charge…
What your settop box says abour your newspaper
The perils of cross-media ownership are obvious and the Bombay daily DNA demonstrates it in ample measure today on its business pages. The news-you-can-use story is ostensibly aimed at empowering TV viewers on the various options before them as the country’s four metros go digital from July 1. It lists the comparative advantages of Tata…
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…
Is UPA hitting back at ToI, India Today, DNA?
There has been plenty of buzz in recent days that the Congress-led UPA government has quietly begun hitting back at the media for the manner in which it has exposed the scams and scandals, and for the proactive manner in which it backed the middle-class led “Arnab Spring”. There have been rumours, for instance, of…
The ex-Zee journalist in the Anna Hazare show
The TV and newspaper coverage of the growing anti-corruption movement has been singularly personality-driven. In fact, it is almost as if there is just one man behind it all—the 74-year-old Anna Hazare—and the four five other civil society members giving him company on the Lokpal joint drafting committee: the lawyers Prashant and Shanti Bhushan, the…
Is it all over for DNA in the battle for Bombay?
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The October 8 issue of Forbes magazine, from the CNBC-TV18 group, carries a four-page story that reads more like an advance obituary for DNA, the English broadsheet daily newspaper that was launched by the Dainik Bhaskar and Zee television groups to humble The Times of India in urbs prima in…
10 media barons in India Today power list of 50
Ronnie Screwvala of UTV, and Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy of NDTV, are the three prominent media names missing in India Today magazine’s annual ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India for the year of the lord, 2010. Otherwise, this year’s list comprise the usual barons: Samir Jain and Vineet Jain of The…
IJR 