Digital will be a complimentary vertical for Times Now: Rahul Shivshankar

Times Now has reported spectacular numbers for Saturday, March 11, 2017, the day of the results for the five State Assembly Polls. Across the full day, with a market share of 55 per cent, Times Now led across the three important time periods of Live Counting, Post Result-live Analysis Hours and Prime Time to leave all other English News channels far behind. 

As per a release issued, from 7 am to 7 pm, Times Now garnered a market share of 55 per cent, which was more than twice that of CNN News18, which was placed second. 

According to BARC ratings in Week 11 (March 11-17, 2017), Times Now saw a substantial increase in its ratings to dominate the English News genre with 2,282 impressions (000s). 

Rahul Shivshankar, Chief Editor, Times Now, took over the reins at the news channel following the exit of Arnab Goswami, who had also helmed the hugely successful prime time debate show, ‘Newshour’. Shivshankar brings in an interesting contrast not just personality wise, but also in his style of journalism and his unshakeable faith in facts, which he calls ‘the soul of journalism’. 

In conversation with Adgully, Rahul Shivshankar speaks at length about his vision for the channel, expansion plans, on the importance of going HD, the importance of facts above all else, and moving away from a personality-led style of journalism. Edited excerpts:

What factors have contributed to such record breaking numbers last week for Times Now?

It could be a few things. One, we focused consciously on facts – I am not the kind of journalist who thinks that fact does not matter. A lot of people say that fact is plain vanilla or that it belongs to Wikipedia, but for me fact is extremely important. Navika (Kumar, Managing Editor – Politics, Times Now) is a serious and established journalist and both of us combine really well along with other members of the team, and a great team of panelist – and we allow them to speak. It is very important that when you have people on your show, you allow them to speak. People might have just hanged in there for ten more minutes because they got value rather than flames. 

Every editor brings in his own style of journalism, what is your vision for Times Now? How distinct is it from your predecessor?

Earlier, it was personality-led, but I am not a personality-led person. I am a fact-led person and that is why I wanted to do ‘India Upfront’ and not ‘Newshour’ which was personality driven. With this transition, we have lost a few viewers, but new viewers are joining us who wanted something different for a change and that’s why ‘Newshour’ has kept in the leadership position with a 40+ per cent week on week product and to sustain that number after the exit of my predecessor was very big task, but as we make that transition, I wanted to launch a product which started putting facts upfront. For me, fact is the soul of journalism and I want the viewer to be rewarded by all sides of the argument with facts. All viewers should know the essence of a news story. I am from the old school of journalism and believe that fact creates credibility, value and comprehension. If you don’t have fact in your reportage, then you only have noise. But if you have fact, then you have purposeful noise that will lead to some qualitative impact and change. We broke the Gaikwad’s story first and took it to a level of accountability; we dug into the facts of the story. We went to his home, travelled to his locality to find out why this man has become the way he has become. 

You had quite big shoes to fit in…

All journalists are good journalists, especially when you reach your level of leadership. I was Editor-In-Chief at another channel which gave Times Now a run for its money. I would re-define big shoes, I would say there is a huge responsibility that comes in with leading a brand that is as established as Times Now. The challenge was to ensure the brand that I felt had been a little hollowed out and become superimposed by another person and that brand needed to be restored. I wasn’t looking to become another personality here, but to bring the brand back to focus, because from the brand flows values and my whole idea was to bring value back to the brand and from that perspective it was a huge responsibly and challenge. 

We had Donald Trump who won the election on personality, he cast aside facts and made a fool out of a lot of people and today his approval ratings are the lowest in US history for any president so soon after coming into presidency. I do not want to be in a situation where someone else comes into the market and does the kind of journalism that I aspire to do but could not because I was filling the shoes of some big person. At the end of the day, every person is the sum of the team and for people to say that a person becomes a big leader because they are larger than everyone is wrong. Personalities are not made in a vacuum, but on the back of a lot of hard working investment. 

You are working with the same team now. Is that a plus for you?

I am very lucky to be working with this team; it had never been given its due. I was a part of this team in 2011 and I know the circumstances under which I had to leave. The team is instrumental in creating this brand. At the end of day, the captain gets to show his face and become the face of other people’s hard work, but I am coming back here so that my team out there is equal stakeholder in this channel. 

Are you planning on bringing new people on board to strengthen the team?

There are brilliant people on this team, but if there are people out there who bring value to the product as we grow, we are always open to bringing in fresh talent who can build Times Now along the lines that we have charted for ourselves. 

Some insights on your prime time show ‘India Upfront’…

‘India Upfront’ is built on my personality, I have 22 years of experience as a journalist and one of the reasons I exited Times Now earlier was because I felt somewhere down the line the retract had begun to overpower the narration of truth and I was uncomfortable with that. My entire promotion of the show is to tell the viewers that you can do good journalism and get good numbers for shows by sticking to the fundamental fact and I begin my show talking about the hard facts. 

Is Indian television news largely personality/ anchor led rather than by marquee content?

I think content is very instrumental to every channel. In the evolution of every channel you come to a fork in the road between personality or brand. Aaj Tak is No. 1, but never personality led. If there has been a success story on Indian television, its Aaj Tak’s locked value and they have a completely different approach. It’s not personality led but content led. 

At the recent Ficci-Frames, there was a discussion on factual reportage vis-a-vis dominating opinion. Do you think in today’s era of multiple sources of news, truth has become a casualty in news reportage?

That’s precisely why ‘India Upfront’ has been launched to bring truth and fact back to the picture and that is what the philosophy will be as far as I am concerned on Times Now because it definitely had become a casualty. 

With the all pervasive presence and growing adoption of digital today, do you think there is a worry factor for television news somewhere?

No, because I think digital is very good for us. From a broadcaster’s point of view, I want instant feedback and I want to be honest and kept honest. The viewer now can reach out to you and it has made the main media more accountable. Technology also means that people can access content on digital and we are also going to populate digital in a very big way. Our next push for Times Now will be on digital space and we will become a news leader in digital space. We want digital to be a complimentary vertical for us. 

How do you look at social media to decide on story ideas?

I don’t look at social media to decide my stories because we have so much regional content of our own. I find it sometimes frustrating that I can’t take the huge amount of content that we have. Mirror Now will be able to access so much more of it, but I keep an eye on social media to ensure there may be some issues where we may not have seen the perspective. 

What was the need for launching Mirror Now? How will it grow the Times Network?

It’s a very beautiful product because it puts the viewer and his worries on an everyday level back into the news. We all have problems at the RTO, tax offices, etc., and we never had a voice or platform that brings out that frustration, but Mirror Now can be that. 

How do you see the road ahead for Times Now? What are the challenges that need to be addressed on an urgent basis?

The challenge is to live up to your yesterday, every day. Your yesterday must be as good as today and your today will have to be infinitely better than your tomorrow. For us, going forward is to make sure we live up to the promises we are making, which is to put fact at the heart of every story. 

What about international reportage?

We are a channel that is currently distributed in 100 countries, and going forward we will be differentiating our content to serve the people of different areas and countries. You will see many variants of Times Now and so HD (High Definition) is very important for us and we will have individual content feeds. So far, the backend is pretty much in place, it is now about getting the right FCP (Fixed Point Chart) together. 

There are some stories which are seeded by various news channels even before they are launching. How do you respond to that?

I am not here to compete against rumour, gossip or legitimise it, but my responsibility is to my viewer. If my viewer says something about me, I get really worried about it. But competition and rumours don’t affect me.