This news item seems interesting, in fact it is really quite interesting given dynamics in business television and dailies with the entry of ET Now in a few weeks (months?). While the valuation demands are a bit on the insane side, The Economic Times still breaks a lot of stories and ET Now will be seen as major competition to CNBC-TV18.
At the end of the day, according to ratings, and ratings do matter no matter what people say about 'prestige' and all, Times Now is the leading English news channel in India. They have in a few years pretty much overhauled more established channels with more experienced reporters. That is not to say that there are no issues there, but they've done it and one reason was that CNN-IBN and NDTV concentrated far too much on each other allowing these guys to quietly storm past. Now, with CNBC-TV18 taking ET Now's threat a lot more seriously and the fact that when it coimes to 'first' at least with post-result interviews, CNBC is a tough act to beat, it should be interesting. The only problem is the timing and the slippage of the launch date.
The tie-up also will serve Mint in good stead hopefully given that their news reportage has been slipping of late, in fact in certain beats they seem to be almost non-existant. I do not know what an 'editorial and marketing' deal entails, but given CNN-IBN's and Hindustan Times' closeness (the two organisations constantly co-operate on things like 'Indian of the Year', all sorts of Polls - expect a pro-Congress opinion poll shortly, and I don't know that there is a poll but if there is it has to be pro-Congress) this deal is not surprising. It seems the best way to deal with the Times of India Group behemoth is to tie-up. Or let the giant trip itself up, which it seems the rather controversial Private Treaties organisation seems to have done. After all the hullaballo of a year ago, the silence now speaks volumes.
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6 comments:
Hey, no views on the leakage of the Goafest results again? ET carried it last year too, when everyone claimed it was unfortunate, sad et al. And now it happens a second time. On a day when evergreen friend e4m has done a story on Goafest being on its way to becoming an Asian Cannes! Fat chance. Only in India can we condone this sort of surrebder by organisers of the biggest ad fest before the biggest media firm..What a pity.
Here is the Goafest link
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Advertising/Grand-Prix-stays-out-of-frame/articleshow/4337160.cms
Grr, feeling really pissed about this.Wish O&M had stayed away after all.
Your observation about et now's insane valuation seems to be in line with prevailing market conditions.investment bankers were not keen on this proposal due to high valuation demanded. In addition, BCCL has the track record of commercial failure of new ventures.
But you are over rating the editorial ability of economic times. They lost the touch of breaking stories long time back. these days, they only do trend stories with a single quote. The quote is mostly from companies from the private treaty group.
as far as the team of et now is concerned, they could not hire the best talent. among the top guys only two have some exposure to tv while rest of senior staff have never faced camera.
None of them have ever covered stock markets even when they were in print media.
Portfolio losses will hardly affect revenue. They probably have not been booked as revenues in the first place, and in fact they can be booked as losses, presenting a tax advantage.
There is a problem, the but I don't think private treaties is it.
Also, Mr Bhartia is on the board of TV18 so the HT-18 tie-up is closer than you think!
Hello Checkyourfacts007,
It seems like you applied for a job at ET NOW and got rejected. I work with CNBC and some of my friends have left to join ET NOW. They tell me the top team at ET NOW is really good even if some of them are new to TV. They say the channel has a great senior team in Rahul Joshi, Andy Mukherjee, R Sridharan, Sid Dubey, George Cherian etc. In fact, the favourite topic of discussion at not just CNBC but the entire Network 18 is the launch of ET NOW. All of us are scared of the might with which they will strike......
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