Rahul Shivshankar leaves NewsX for Newshour

If you were wondering how long it takes for a news channel to replace a journalist who was both Editor in Chief and star anchor, the answer is approximately 21 days. Our sources have told us that Rahul Shivshankar of News X — dubbed “Arnab Lite” by our CEO Abhinandan Sekhri — will be taking over Times Now‘s Newshour.

The details of Shivshankar’s appointment are yet to be formally announced. However, we’ve been told that though Shivshankar will anchor the prime time slot, but won’t be given the Editor in Chief designation.

Goswami’s last Newshour was on November 14 since the channel’s management didn’t allow Goswami and gang the grand farewell episode they’d planned. There has been as much speculation about Goswami’s next venture as there has been about his successor.

For Shivshankar, this will be a return to the fold. He had been senior editor at Times Now — working with none other than Goswami in the early days of Newshour — before moving to Headlines Today and then NewsX where he was Editor in Chief.

As long-time fans of prime time news (if you haven’t seen or followed @NLprimetime on Twitter, you should), we at Newslaundry are delighted to hear of this development. Watching Shivshankar trying to fill his former mentor’s shoes should be entertaining and if his NewsX debates are any indication, we’re going to have enough to tweet about in the coming months.

This is not to suggest our fondness for Goswami has lessened in any way (he is, after all, the aloo pakoda of primetime). But if Goswami is the Anjali to Newslaundry‘s Rahul — how fitting that the film was titled Kuch Kuch Hota Hai because, that kuch kuch is precisely what’s happening here — Shivshankar could well be our Tina.

We will update this post as when new information comes in.