Sitting in his office, in the presence of gun-toting security personnel, Matang Sinh rattles off the “firsts” that his broadcast business of six years is credited with. “We are the first private satellite TV company to come up from the northeast. Our flagship news channel NE TV is the first in the world to broadcast news in 18 different languages,” he says. “We are the first ones in Asia to launch a bi-lingual news and current affairs channel (Focus TV) targeted at women.”

The accomplishments notwithstanding, Sinh’s claim to fame is not his success in the television news business, but his much longer and controversial political career—which explains the presence of security men in his office—that includes a stint as minister of state for parliamentary affairs in the late P.V. Narasimha Rao’s government.

Sinh, in fact, represents a larger trend of political parties, politicians or their kith and kin entering the news business, one of the fastest growing segments in television, not in terms of viewership or advertising revenue, but the number of new entrants. Besides politicians, the space has seen a hasty entry of some sundry small entrepreneurs from regional markets, with little background in broadcasting, in the past one-and-a-half years.

In fact, in the 15 months ended March 2009, around 55 new news and current affairs channels were given permission to begin operations in India and some 15 to 20 of these were launched during the period, which, incidentally, coincided with the time when the economic downturn was at its worst, and the media industry was struggling to make ends meet.

... contd.