The face of television news in India is changing.
Two developments have made us look differently at news. First, news anchors have been playing musical chairs; second, YouTube is the new news destination, challenging legacy broadcast news. Together, these two factors have left us confused to no end.
What could be more confusing than to come face to face with Rahul Shivshankar on TV and think you’re watching Times Now — only to discover he’s on CNN-News18? Ha ha, fooled you.
Catch a glimpse of Sreenivasan Jain and you immediately assume you’re on NDTV 24×7 when, in fact, you’re watching News 24. Then there’s Marya Shakil, one of the most popular anchors on CNN-News18 now fronting the news on NDTV 24×7, while Palki Sharma is calmly seated in the CNN-News 18 studio when she ought to be found on WION. Rubika Liyaquat, who is meant to be on ABP News, was last seen on Bharat 24 and is promising her fans on X she will announce her new station soon.
Hey, what’s going on here? Answer: Musical chairs, TV news style. In recent months, many anchors and well-known TV news reporters are no longer where they are supposed to be—they’ve taken on new assignments and left us scratching our heads. Take the case of Sudhir Chaudhary—his ‘DNA’ (Daily News and Analysis) was written into Zee News, but he is now in Black & White on Aaj Tak. And Sumit Awasthi, the sage counsel at ABP News, is now consulting with NDTV India.
Uff, can’t keep up with all these changes. Whether these shifts have been good for the TV anchors is impossible to tell, but for viewers, there’s a real, real identity crisis here – you no longer know which channel you’re watching.
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Setting up a safe haven
There’s more to come – from NDTV.
Those of you who want to watch Ravish Kumar, the NDTV India celebrity anchor, have to tune out of TV and tune into Ravish Kumar Official, his YouTube channel. That’s precisely what his eight million subscribers do.
YouTube seems to have become the safe haven for these news anchors and correspondents who left NDTV in 2022 – or since the Adani Group’s takeover of the channel last December.
Barkha Dutt was on YouTube much before Kumar, with her ‘Mojo Story’ that she set up after leaving NDTV 24×7 in 2017.
Barkha and Ravish were recently joined on YouTube by Sanket Upadhyay and Saurabh Shukla, two other well-established NDTV journalists. Together, they have launched The Red Mike, which features ground reports, interviews, and debates—pretty much what they were doing on NDTV.
In a YouTube interview with Major Mohommed Ali Shah, Sanket said they had taken the plunge because it was time to “take it [their work] to another level”. Shukla said things had changed at NDTV—there was a “Laxman rekha’’ and they had stopped “enjoying” their work.
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Critical of BJP, ‘Godi media’
How are they doing now? Well, Ravish Kumar leads the way, Barkha Dutt has 1.35 million subscribers, Abhisar Sharma, another one-time NDTV hand, clocks in almost 3.5 million subscribers, while newcomer The Red Mike has 1,70,000 subscribers so far.
Of course, there are many YouTube channels that aren’t led by former news anchors—Lallantop, for instance, is hugely popular with 27 million subscribers.
These numbers tell us that there are millions of Indians looking for alternatives to TV news—and are turning to YouTube where these journalists have set up shop.
And they do present a different perspective: Ravish Kumar and Abhisar Sharma, for example, make a point of attacking “Godi media” for its alleged BJP bias. In a recent episode, Ravish wondered how and why “Godi media” had misread or misrepresented the “wave” in favour of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister who led BJP to a sweeping victory in the state election. He suggests it was deliberate.
Abhisar, on his show, says the “Godi media” will never look into allegations of corruption against Mohan Yadav, the newly chosen chief minister of Madhya Pradesh; had the Congress won, TV news channels would have created a hungama over it. Abhisar also correctly predicted that the new chief minister of Rajasthan would be “someone we never imagined”—it’s Bhajanlal Sharma, by the way.
Meanwhile, on The Red Mike, Saurabh Shukla investigated a Noida building scheme with irate investors who told him the builders had virtually run away with their money. There was an interview with Dr Kafeel Khan following an FIR over his book detailing the fiasco at BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur that killed more than 60 children in 2017. His ordeal is part of the Shah Rukh Khan blockbuster, Jawan.
The allure of a different viewpoint, often critical of the ruling BJP, and the absence of noise on YouTube channels, are attracting audiences who are tired of the regular TV debates.
Saurabh and Sanket hinted that they could be joined by many others. Are we looking at the possibility of a full-fledged YouTube news channel? That would be huge but also very risky, financially.
For now, TV anchors and correspondents seem content with doing their own thing on YouTube. Interestingly, the ones we have spoken about are from NDTV. Will we see more TV news personalities, from other news channels, take the plunge?
Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)