Ever since Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of Times Now, announced his resignation officially inside the newsroom, there’s been one question on the nation’s mind. What will happen to Newshour, Times Now’s most popular show, without its star anchor?    

It is no exaggeration to say Goswami has been the face of Times Now ever since the channel’s inception. Until he decided to leave, this has been the cherry on the channel’s rating cake. Now, however, Times Now’s advertisers have been knocking on its doors, asking that their contracts be reconsidered or renegotiated.

According to Times Now’s marketing team, the two-hour prime time show generated approximately 40 per cent of Times Now’s annual revenue. While there aren’t actual numbers yet, sources tell us that there are reports being put together to calculate the financial impact of the loud golden goose’s exit, particularly since advertisers are convinced the channel’s ratings will dip when Goswami is no longer on screen.  

What the nation may not know is that Goswami’s Newshour alone brought in Rs 120 crore in revenue annually. “I am giving you lower numbers, sometimes it touches as high 150 crores annually,” Assistant Accounts Director of Times Network, Akhil Mahajan told Newslaundry.

“We are trying to get the person to stay with us,” Mahajan told Newslaundry (the person in question is Goswami). Newslaundry has reached out to the show’s sponsors and is awaiting a response.

Ten-second spot advertisements can cost between Rs 50,000 to 60,000. Advertisers and slots had been booked until August 2017. It’s unclear what will happen to these agreements now that Goswami is scheduled to leave in the latter half of November.

Currently, Hyundai and Patanjali have a year-long contract with the network and Apollo Tyres recently signed a contract as well. A source in Times Now admitted that the marketing team has been inundated with emails as “the good” being sold is no longer available. A few advertisers have categorically asked for their contracts to be revoked following Goswami’s last broadcast on the channel.

Our source also told us that sponsors are “asking for discounts and a few of them are asking for cancellation of the contract. Hyundai is asking not to place any spot if Arnab is not there.” The disappearance of Patanjali’s Rs 12 Cr coupled with Hyundai’s Rs 11 Cr annually would mean a major setback to the network’s revenue.

As Editor-in-Chief, Goswami single handedly took Times Now to the top of the list of English-language news channels in the country. The viewership measurement metric or “Impressions” released by the Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) depicts Times Now’s dominance over its competitor in the market.

Impressions are defined as the “number of individuals in thousands of a target audience who viewed an ‘Event’, averaged across minutes.”

For instance, in the last ten weeks, the Impression (in India across males over 22 years) ratings for Times Now was double that of its nearest competitor in the weekly data except once, when it was only around one and a half times more. Goswami’s impressions following the Uri attacks were almost thrice the numbers of its nearest competitor, CNN-News18.

Though Goswami’s contract ends in December, an official statement released to the media earlier today announced that he will not be working with Times Now after November. The marketing team is hopeful that this will buy them time enough to strategise a new revenue model.