With 'The Newspaper Show', Times Group leverages its news channels to support its print publications

As the print media battles falling revenues, layoffs and salary cuts, the Times Group has come up with a unique way to leverage its news channels to prop up its print publications.

From April 29, Times Now began "The Newspaper Show", described as "a daily half hour morning show dedicated to bringing the latest newspaper headlines straight to your living room". Broadcast at 8 am every day, anchor Heena Gambhir discusses the top headlines from Economic Times, Navbharat Times, and editions of the Times of India from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata.

The same show is broadcast on Mirror Now at 9.30 am.

Gambhir also brings on Times Now reporters to further discuss news stories. Today, for example, once Gambhir was done with the front page of Delhi's Times of India, a reporter joined in to summarise the latest news from the national capital.

The show comes at a time when the media industry is in crisis thanks to a combination of the economic slowdown and the coronavirus pandemic. In the course of one month, multiple media houses including Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Quint, the Times of India, News Nation, NDTV, the Hindu, and many others have laid off employees or announced salary cuts. In April, several journalist unions moved the Supreme Court, asking for a stop to pay cuts and layoffs by media employers.

Last week, the Indian Newspaper Society, a pressure group which works to protect the interest of the newspaper industry, issued an advisory on the free circulation of digital editions of newspapers, calling it “piracy and theft". It also urged member organisations to communicate clearly in apps, websites and newspapers that circulating a copy or part of an epaper is illegal and that strict legal action will be taken against individuals doing so with heavy penalties.

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