Donald Trump just launched a 24/7 White House channel starring himself, after the major networks refused to cover him. Interesting timing. But familiar move, if you happen to have a memory that stretches back to April 2019.

Consider it one more entry in the vishwaguru’s syllabus: Because six years before Trump TV: The Essentials Station hit American devices, India was already several chapters ahead on state-adjacent programming.

In the final tense hours before the 2019 general election kicked off, with the Election Commission’s mandatory “silence period” already in effect, a channel calling itself NaMo TV was still merrily broadcasting Narendra Modi speeches. It sat on Tata Sky at channel 324 (filed under Hindi movies, no less), channel 145 (Hindi entertainment), and channel 512 (Hindi news).

On the day Newslaundry wrote about this, there was a loving segment on how the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana housing scheme had changed lives. Inspiring stuff, arguably violating election law, if anyone was counting.

NaMo TV, after all, had no clearly declared owner. The Election Commission, ever a picture of urgency, did not take any action against the DTH operator or the channel itself, though it did eventually decide to add NaMo TV’s advertising costs to the BJP’s official election expenditure, The Indian Express reported back then. (You can read more about the channel here.)

Now fast-forward to Trump.

After barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and watching the rest of the press pool walk out in solidarity, a first in modern memory, Trump found himself with no cameras at his own helipad ribbon-cutting. The White House’s fix was to reinvent NaMo TV’s wheel, just with better production values.

When the room stops handing you the mic, you don’t leave the room. You build a new one where the mic never turns off. NaMo TV proved you could do it with three cable slots and a vague ownership structure. Trump TV proved you could do it with the full weight of the federal government behind you.

Which, fittingly, brings us to the one thing neither NaMo TV nor Trump TV will ever do for you: ask a real question and stick around for the answer. That’s still our job. Twenty-five years of Modi governance deserve exactly that – hard questions, not highlight reels. 

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