The channel which has played a role in modernizing India’s TV news reporting and has never shied away from taking important positions on the government, may soon be taken over by the Adani Group.
The channel which has played a role in modernizing India’s TV news reporting and has never shied away from taking important positions on the government, may soon be taken over by the Adani Group.
Just hours after the Fitch Group unit, CreditSights, came out with a report that called the Adani Group “profoundly over-profit” and the group’s “highly ambitious debt-funded growth plans … a massive debt trap.” In a spiral”, the Adani Group, in an unrelated press release, said it had bid to take over NDTV by first indirectly acquiring a 29.18% stake and then making an open offer for a 26% ownership stake in the media entity.
NDTV is one of India’s most well-known media brands, with NDTV leading the 24/7 English television news space, its website NDTV.com is one of the most read English news websites and some of its current and former anchors There are well recognized public figures. In a survey recently published in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report for 2022 – whose respondents were primarily English-speaking online news users in India – NDTV Online used the most weekly, and 24-hour TV news channels in the survey. was considered by the respondents. Being less trustworthy than its print counterparts, NDTV ranks highest among Indian TV outlets.
It is ironic that CreditSights’ warning to the Adani group that a debt trap could put some of its companies in trouble, a similar situation for the media entity in a similar way, followed a series of financial transactions carried out by the promoters of NDTV company. was led by. The financial crisis of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
chaotic space
Television news in India today is a chaotic place with many English news channels – many of whose editors cut their teeth at NDTV – and the model of the news business has also changed greatly since NDTV modernized TV news reporting in India. had taken the lead. , NDTV was first launched in 1984 by Radhika and Prannoy Roy as a production house for news broadcasting, before becoming a commercial news network in 1988 primarily for the Monopoly TV network and state-owned Doordarshan. was created. Radhika Roy had a career in journalism. In Indian Express And india today Prior to co-founding NDTV, while Prannoy Roy worked as a macroeconomist at the Delhi School of Economics, he had a distinct interest in sepology after completing his doctoral degree at the same institute apart from being a certified chartered accountant.
NDTV’s most famous offering on Doordarshan in the late 1980s was ‘The World This Week’, a news program that brought reporting and analysis of world events. Soon, NDTV produced special shows related to election coverage and analysis, budget specials and then aired a daily news bulletin on DD Metro. These shows were praised for bringing reporter-driven focus and production values of international standard – with live (or near-live) dispatch from journalists, graphics and use of file images and video. This was in contrast to the more static and desk-read-out news bulletins brought by Doordarshan and soon NDTV’s model of news collection and presentation became popular, which replaced television news.
NDTV started a 24-hour news channel in 1998 in partnership with Star India and started its branch as an independent broadcaster in 2003. It followed a strategy of recruiting talents with familial ties to the establishment—bureaucracy, political army, etc. e.t.c. In addition to being reporter-driven in its news collection and presentation, the channel also promoted its anchors, who gained substantial profits and attention, becoming the face of the news network. Some of these anchors – Rajdeep Sardesai and Arnab Goswami – quickly entered new news networks as editors and ‘star’ anchors, others such as Barkha Dutt remained for a few years before moving out, while others such as Srinivasan Jain, Sonia Singh and Vishnu continue their work on the Som channel.
The larger-than-life publicity of the anchors as news mediators had its own consequences: NDTV anchors, among other news organisations, were accused of not only being close with the establishment, but of using it to undermine reporting of internal workings. was done for. The subsequent release and subsequent release of the Radia tapes revealed government-corporate nexus as a result.
NDTV’s expansion between 2003 and 2008 – with the launch of NDTV India (Hindi news), NDTV Profit (business news) channels – also came at a time when it did not hold a dominant position in the English and Hindi news sector with more channels was. NDTV’s entry into lifestyle and entertainment channels and NDTV Good Times and NDTV Imagine were attempting to create new brands to fund news operations. Investments from banks such as Morgan Stanley helped the expansion. But in the early 2000s the financial cost of news operations for a company listed on stock exchanges had also increased significantly.
The promoters’ decisions to buy back the shares came at an inappropriate time as the stock market crashed during the global financial crisis in 2008, as well as the share price of NDTV. This led the promoters/founders to resort to a series of transactions that began with a ₹501 crore loan from Indiabulls in July 2008, a ₹375 crore loan from ICICI Bank to repay Indiabulls in November 2008 and Altogether ₹403.85 crore from Vishwapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd in two tranches (August 2009 and March 2010). Ltd. (VCPL), an entity controlled indirectly by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, to repay ICICI. Due to the VCPL loan agreement, the promoters transferred a part of their shares to a holding entity Radhika Roy Prannoy Roy Holding (RRPR) in such a way that RRPR held 29.18% of NDTV and VCPL to acquire 99.9% of RRPR equity. Gave the permission to. Conversion of warrant, if debt was not paid. The decision enabled a “hostile bid” by the Adani group to regain control of NDTV after nearly a decade and a half.
revenue model
NDTV’s expansion into new territories began to hurt its financials, and its revenue model – heavily reliant on advertisements – began to provide declining yields even in a crowded TV news market. A long period of financial decline was reflected in the company’s share prices and market capitalization which fell significantly by mid-2010.
With the TRP TV rating model, which was later shown to be flawed, controlling ad placements, NDTV was no longer the preferred destination for advertisements. Meanwhile, with the Bharatiya Janata Party coming to power in 2014, it changed the nature of public discourse supported by television channels, in addition to focusing its attention on news operations.
Today, the primetime offerings of English news channels are limited to studio “discussion” and polarized “debate”. In general news reporting, English news channels barely show the in-depth investigation or coverage of issues relating to livelihoods or broader, deeper trends in the political economy, international affairs or public policy as it did in the 1990s. More specifically, the major channels in the television news media in India underwent a quick “foxification” – a copy of the controversial American news channel Fox News.
NDTV tried to keep up with this trend as one of a rapidly declining number of exceptions. Financially, years of cost-cutting through a thriving digital operation in addition to a reduction in workforce size and scale of operations allowed it to turn around. In FY 2020-21, NDTV posted revenue of ₹357.63 crore and profit of ₹74.86 crore, but these numbers are also a reflection of the size of the group’s operations, which emerged more than a decade ago.
Adani Group has now bought VCPL from its current owners, Mahendra Nahata of HFCL Group (associate of Reliance Group) reportedly for ₹113.74 crore (much less than ₹403.85 crore given from VCPL to NDTV) and used immediately . Issued a warrant to acquire a stake in NDTV and an open offer to acquire a majority stake.
The rise of the Adani Group as a prominent and diversified business entity coincides with the rise of Narendra Modi, the former Chief Minister of Gujarat and the current Prime Minister, and its promoter’s close association with the present Central Government is well known. It has now begun to seek majority control of one of the country’s few independent TV and digital media groups, set to take key positions on the government of the day, leaving NDTV looking at an uncertain future.