NL Interview: TV9 CEO Barun Das on ratings, sensationalism and India's first OTT news platform
‘Ad-driven news is an oxymoron.’
Barun Das is MD and CEO of TV9 Network. In over 25 years in the news industry, Barun has worked with Zee News, India Today and ABP in various managerial positions.
In this interview with Manisha Pande, Barun gives an insider’s perspective into how ratings work in the world of TV news and offers insight into all that went wrong with the alleged TRP scam. He also shares TV9 Network’s plan about moving forward with the country’s first OTT news platform, NewsNine Plus.
On the state of TV news in India, Barun expresses his regret and lays the blame of sensationalism at the door of ‘competition’. He says that he's not very comfortable with sensationalism personally but the lines between ‘journalistic ethics’ and ‘communication challenges’ get blurred when ‘everybody is doing it’. However, the only way forward, he opines, is to eventually move from an ad-based revenue model to a subscription model for news. Which is what Newslaundry has been saying all this while, that the public has to pay to keep news free!
Watch.
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TRP scam: BARC’s ratings suspension has news channels worried, but not advertisersSubscribe now to unlock the story
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