When viewership goes virulent: Times Now & Republic TV heads spar on Facebook

The gloves are truely off. English news channel genre has been witnessing an intense battle for eyeballs and claims of leadership ever since the launch of Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV in May 2017. Republic TV shook up the genre and claimed the leadership spot since its launch and is in no mood to relinquish that position. On the other hand, in recent weeks Times Now has been a close contender. 

On January 5, 2018, Republic TV boldly claimed on its channel “Viewership Annihilation and Demolition of Times Now Complete”, openly naming its rival channel. 

Reacting to this, in a Facebook post Mandar Madhuri Natekar, Senior VP, Viacom18 and Revenue Head, MTV, MTV Indies at MTV India, commented, “The English news market is really hotting (sic) up. It’s rare to see in our industry, such sensationally aggressive headlines about competition to this extent. The gloves are off I guess....” 

Following this, both MK Anand, MD and CEO, Times Network, and Vikas Khanchandani, CEO, Republic TV, took to Facebook to log in their reactions. 

MK Anand spoke about fighting for numbers by fair means and dignity in leadership. “We are more focussed on consumer perception and brand salience,” he insisted. 

On the other hand, Vikas Khanchandani wrote, “It is so easy to make tall claims of fairness when in reality one breaks every rule in the book.” He also wrote, “Once you take the gloves off one should not project it to release doves.”

The verbal spat also sparked a series of comments from quite a few observers, including Ajit Varghese, Global President, Market Development, Wavemaker; Divya Radhakrishnan, Founder, Helios Media; Dupindera Sandhu, Head - Web & New Businesses, Business Analytics & Strategy at HomeShop18, and Rajiv Dubey, Head of Media, Dabur India.