P7 Shutdown: The Story Behind The ‘Breaking News’

The Hindi news channel’s imminent shutdown points to the dealings of its parent company.

WrittenBy:Sushant Kumar
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While it’s routine for news companies to open and shut shop in a highly competitive media industry, rarely would you come across a channel that announces its own closure as breaking news. Noida-based Hindi news channel, P7, stumped its viewers by doing exactly that when it broadcast the news of its closure on November 21.

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The “breaking news” here is quite simply that the channel is closing down owing to salary disputes: “Salary vivaad ke chalte P7 News band.” The move on part of the channel to do so would have been hilarious, had it not been for the circumstances leading to P7’s closure – which point to the trying conditions under which many media professionals work.

P7 employees, according to this report on the Hindi media website Bhadas4media, had been protesting against the management since they had not received their salaries for almost three months. They gheraoed P7 Director Kesar Singh on November 21, not letting him leave his cabin until he paid up their dues. Singh was ultimately let out of the agitation with help from the Noida police, stated the website.

Following the physical confrontation, P7 journalists took their grievance to social media and created a Facebook page on the same day named: “Justice for P7 employees”. The page, which served as the voice of aggrieved workers, was however taken down from Facebook when we last checked this morning. “This page is dedicated to the P7 News employees are being cheated by it’s Directors. We will fight against these junks till justice is done [sic],” said the “About” section of the page.

According to the last update on the page on November 24, P7 News employees were paid their salaries only till September.

An employee of P7 news, on condition of anonymity, told Newslaundry that the management has asked all employees to work till the end of the month. “On Friday, it was decided that the TV channel would be shut down. Our salaries have been pending for the last two to three months,” she said. “We hope to get all reimbursements and our due salary by the second week of December,” she added.

Newslaundry made repeated attempts to get in touch with the channel’s director and management but they were not available for comment.

This is not the first time, though, that the channel has found itself in trouble and its shutdown was perhaps imminent. P7 News is part of Pearls Broadcasting Corporation Limited that is owned by Pearls Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL).

According to a Business Standard report, PACL, a real-estate company, was involved in a Rs 49,100-crore illicit money-pooling scam. Earlier in February, the Central Bureau of Investigation had filed a case for criminal conspiracy and cheating against PACL Managing Director Sukhdev Singh and Nirmal Singh Bhangoo — MD of sister firm Pearls Golden Forest — for allegedly duping its investors through schemes for the sale and development of agricultural land.

According to news reports, PACL was directed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India to refund a staggering $8.1 billion to its investors. This is perhaps why employees at P7 News had to face delays in salaries and now loss of jobs. In a rather dramatic narrative on a Hindi media website Samachar4media, a senior journalist also highlighted the internal “mismanagement” at the workplace that resulted in the eventual downfall of the TV channel.

Notably, another bilingual TV news channel in Assam, Prime News, also closed down last year on fairly similar grounds. While P7’s owners have taken the convenient route of shutting down the company altogether, its employees will have to fight a long battle to get their rightful remuneration, if current industry practices are anything to go by.

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