Senior journalist Arnab Goswami launched his new channel Republic TV on Saturday morning at 10 am.After much talk and media hype, Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV went live on Saturday morning,and even before viewers settled to listen to the anchor’s ‘Super exclusive’, trends like #Republic, #May6WithArnab and #LaluTapeExposed were trending on Twitter.
Republic TV is an English-language news and current affairs television channel based in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India.The channel went live on May 6, 2017 at 10 AM. Republic TV is a global media venture to promote unbiased journalism.
Prior to the channel’s launch, billboards had sprung up across cities with larger-than-life portraits of Arnab Goswami announcing the imminent launch of his new media venture.
The tagline went “the nation STILL wants to know”. For today, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RLD) supremo Lalu Prasad was the target. Goswami confronted him with a tape in which Lalu Prasad is heard having a conversation with jailed criminal-turned-politician Mohammad Shahabuddin.
A Facebook users hailed Goswami as “don”, and said, “Lalu is in trouble”.
Star India’s online streaming service Hotstar has announced that news channel Republic TV will be made available on its platform, a first of its kind partnership between a news channel and an online streaming service, in India.
“Hotstar is a compelling destination for content cutting across genres and age groups. We are confident of breaking the digital barrier and believe this is the first step as news produced in India goes digital and then global. We believe the coming together of these two exciting brands and services will take news to the 90 million-plus viewers on Hotstar every month. You can now catch Republic on the move and on demand,” said Goswami, editor-in-chief and founder of Republic TV.
Hotstar plans to introduce news as a distinct category on the platform, adding to its existing portfolio of popular TV shows, movies and sports. It clocked a viewership of 36.4 million for the ongoing T20 cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League, in its first two weeks.
Chairman & CEO, Star India Uday Shankar, in a statement issued, said “We are deeply committed to making sure that we continuously widen Hotstar’s offering, and the launch of Republic TV on Hotstar fills a big gap in our portfolio.”
Earlier this week, Republic TV announced that it will use a range of Microsoft products and services that are designed to make newsrooms more productive. Microsoft Azure will host Republic’s digital platforms.
The channel also announced that it will be a free to air channel. On dish satellite providers, it will be available on TataSky – channel no. 616, Airtel Digital TV – 376, DishTV – 771 and Videocon d2h — 360.
Talking about its collaboration with Videocon, Saurabh Dhoot, Executive Chairman, said, “We are delighted to have Republic TV on our platform from the day the channel goes on air. This reaffirms Videocon d2h’s commitment to bringing the best of TV channels for our viewers.”
The channel is part of ARG Outlier Media Private Limited and has Rajya Sabha MP’s Rajeev Chandrashekar’s Asianet News Online Private Limited, and SARG Media Holding Private Limited which is owned by Goswami himself among its investors.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an entrepreneur, and an independent Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha,also the vice-chairman of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition National Democratic Alliance in its Kerala wing, invested in ARG Outlier Media Private Ltd., a company that the Republic TV was reported to be a part of. Through companies owned by him, he invested ₹30 crore (US$4.7 million) in it.
The other major investor was Goswami himself along with his wife Samyabrata Ray, who invested through SARG Media Holding Private Ltd., a company that the two held majority equity in.
