MUMBAI: English business news (EBN) channel ET Now completed nine years of its existence on 17 June. It has also been a year since the channel revamped itself last August with the tagline ‘rise with India’. The move was to go beyond just business clips to be a holistic channel.
The channel claims that its debate show The Development Debate has shown consistency in ratings. ET Now managing editor Sandeep Gurumurthi said, “We want to play an active role in shifting the public discourse back to issues of development. We are today, the only channel doing that. But I am hopeful that over time, others will see merit and follow suit.”
EBN genre is still very niche with only five channels in the race – CNBC TV18, ET Now, BTVI, NDTV Profit and CNBC TV18 Prime HD. The genre contributes to less than one per cent of the total TV pie, where ET Now holds a comfortable position.
On the competition, Gurumurthi said, “We hope CNBC-TV18, BTVI and all other channels catch up with us and help us in shifting the media narrative back to development. I think it's all about making a choice.”
He believes that the biggest challenge EBN channels are facing right now is that the genre has been boxed into a niche category apart from all the challenges that general English news channels face.
ET Now reaches 28 lakh viewers every month on an average with strong viewership from the six metros. Mumbai has traditionally contributed the most to viewership and remains the trend as informed by Gurumurthi. There are some channels that get disproportionate viewership from markets like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. “There are also instances where for some business channels, a market gets active for three weeks contributing 70 per cent to their viewership and then for the rest of year contributes three or four TVTs,” he added.
He believes that the channel’s strategy remains to consolidate its position as a credible, independent and unbiased provider of news and insights to the get-ahead Indian. The aim is to do whatever it takes to remain consistent with the channel’s tagline. With the four upcoming assembly elections, the channel intends to cover them with the same intensity and rigour as a general news channel would.
