News Broadcasting
TVC launches 24-hour shopping channel
MUMBAI: TVC a leading brand in direct selling and a pioneer of teleshopping in India has launched TVC Online, a 24 hour dedicated teleshopping channel.
This is part of an ambitious expansion initiative undertaken by TVC Sky Shop.
TVC Online, a free to air digital channel, has a round-the-clock schedule. The telecast will be on a 12 + 12 hours cycle. TVC has 100 odd products in their collection, which they want to promote through the newly launched channel.Briefing the press, TVC chairman Vinod Agarwal informed that the company would be continuing their telecasts in other channels as well.
“We will be continuing with our schedules in other channels. We need some time to establish the TVC channel in the market,” Agarwal said.
Talking to Indiantelevision.com, Agarwal said the company is expecting a three-fold increase in their turnover with the launch of the channel. Agarwal put the company’s present turnover at Rs 500 million. He added that the channel would be viewed in 5 crore houses across India within the next two months.
Worldwide, sky shopping generates 100 billion US dollars. But in India, the industry is yet to catch up. Agarwal attributed this phenomenon to the country’s consumer culture.
“Indians are different customers. They like to feel and touch the product before buying. The middleclass is very particular about it,” said Agarwal. “The strategy TVC has adopted to tackle this is by opening 74 stores across India where people can come, see the product, touch, feel and then buy,” offered Agarwal.
In Mumbai, TVC has opened seven stores. TVC officials reiterated their priority as customer satisfaction. Agarwal pointed out that there was no question of ‘queries unanswered’ as TVC has developed a round-the-clock call center.
“We started with four people and now we have a team of 200 plus,” informed Nerula.
Agarwal expressed his hope that India would also follow the US example by adopting the sky shopping culture at a fast rate.
“We have to set the standards for the industry,” he said.
Regarding the price range TVC is offering, Agarwal said they had reduced the prices as the focus is on volume sale than target marketing.
TVC president marketing MS Nerula said with the people following a hectic life schedule, the significance of a 24-hour shopping channel has acquired immense dimensions.
“Internet shopping could only appeal to a limited section of our society as the common man was not computer savvy. But a 24 hour tele-shopping channel has great potential because television has become a popular media,” commented Nerula.
TVC executive director said that TVC would bring innovative products at affordable prices, as Indians are very particular about prices. Samtani claimed that TVC had five lakhs of satisfied customers.
“We are here for a long run and we are in the diver’s seat. We want to develop the retail industry,” Samtani said.
TVC officials expressed their willingness to carry the advertisements of other brands, which are not part of TVC, in the channel. “We welcome all and we are open to the possibilities of carrying advertisements of external brands,” offered Samtani.
Samtani defended the decision to hire stars to promote the products. “Nowadays, all the reputed brands have stars endorsing them, then why TVC can’t?” queried Samtani in a lighter vein.
TVC has roped in Jackie Shroff, Divya Dutta, Anu Kapoor and Mrinal Kulkarni to endorse the TVC products.
When asked how they were expecting the audience to sit through 25 or 30 minutes of product information telecast per product, Agarwal explained that, establishing their products in people’s minds would need time, as they are new in Indian market.
“You can’t compare them with the market’s top brands who need just 30 seconds of ad time. We don’t have brands and so our products will need more time, naturally.”
Agarwal told Indiantelevision.com that TVC had no prime time schedule as the 24-hour channel is running in two cycles of 12 hours repeat telecasts.
“TVC is targeting the whole society. This will help people to watch the channel at their convenience. A housewife might opt to watch the channel in the afternoon. Kids might watch it in the morning. The working class will be watching it in the evening,” pointed out Agarwal.
Details of TVC channel frequency:
1. Up Linking Frequency : 6570 Mhz
2. Down Link Frequency : 3545 Mhz
3. FEC : ¾
4. Symbol Rate : 26.667
5. Polarization U/L : Horizontal
6. Polarization D/L : Vertical
7. Satellite : Thaicom 3
8. Orbital : 78.5 Deg east
News Broadcasting
Newsrooms rethink AI, trust and revenue models
Editors and tech leaders debate tools, deepfakes and viability.
MUMBAI: If yesterday’s newsroom ran on caffeine and chaos, tomorrow’s may well run on code but with a human still holding the pen. At the 22nd edition of the Video Broadcast and Broadband Tech Summit hosted by IndianTelevision.com, some of the sharpest minds in Indian media gathered to examine how artificial intelligence, automation and shifting audience behaviour are reshaping journalism. The session, titled The Newsroom of Tomorrow Tools, Trust, and Business Viability In Focus, did not descend into techno-utopian hype. Instead, it wrestled with a more uncomfortable question: how do you stay relevant, credible and profitable when the audience is changing faster than the headline cycle?
The panel featured Govindraj Ethiraj, Editor of The Core, Dr Nilesh Khare, COO of Sakal Media Group; Prakaran Tiwari, Chief Executive Producer at NDTV Profit; Manoj Padmanabhan, Head of Business Media and Entertainment at AWS; Neeraj Mishra, Key Account Manager at Vizrt and session chair; and Mayuresh Konnur, Bilingual Correspondent at Collective Newsroom, publisher for BBC in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj set the tone with a frank assessment. “The reason people do not consume as much news through us is because they are consuming news through other sources they trust more,” he said. In a fragmented ecosystem flooded with content, trust has become the real differentiator.
Yet AI is undeniably transforming workflows. Ethiraj admitted he now uses AI tools to proofread his own articles. “Sometimes it is scary how much it picks, but it helps,” he said. What once required layers of sub-editing can now be assisted by machines trained to flag errors, inconsistencies and structural weaknesses.
He pointed to how newsroom roles have evolved. The desk editor, widely advertised over the last 15 years, barely existed in its current form before the internet boom. As digital publishing accelerated, tasks such as curating listicles, ranking stories and optimising headlines became specialised functions. Now, many of those responsibilities can be performed or at least supported by AI systems. The disruption is not hypothetical; it is operational.
Dr Nilesh Khare approached the issue from both a business and technological standpoint. Sakal Media Group is developing its own large language model, built on 60 years of text and photo archives. The goal is independence. “We won’t need to depend on other platforms to develop ours,” he said, underscoring the strategic value of proprietary data.
For Khare, AI represents opportunity as much as anxiety. It can help expand content across geographies and languages, particularly in bridging North and South Indian markets. It can streamline production and reduce costs. He did not shy away from the implications. “As a journalist I feel bad but as a content producer I feel good that we will require less manpower,” he said, articulating a tension many in the room recognised but few openly admit.
He also highlighted how audience behaviour is evolving. Today, a retail investor can follow a stock using Gemini or GPT instead of toggling between multiple news channels. News is no longer consumed linearly; it is queried, personalised and synthesised. The newsroom must therefore produce content that survives not just on screens but within AI-generated summaries.
Prakaran Tiwari offered a more philosophical reflection. “AI has developed itself and adapted on the basis of how news is consumed. It’s all about giving a perspective,” he said. In his view, the competitive edge will not lie in speed alone but in interpretation. Facts are increasingly commoditised; context is not.
He also suggested that formats are fluid. While short-form video dominates social feeds, long-form audio is resurging. Govindraj Ethiraj noted that in the United States the 2024 election was described as the “podcast election”, reflecting how audiences are investing time in deeper, long-form discussions. The newsroom of tomorrow must cater to both scrolling and sustained listening.
Manoj Padmanabhan of AWS reframed the debate. Technology, he argued, is not an existential threat but an amplifier. “The power is given to the human journalist with all this technology in their hand, with it acting as a support or assistant to deliver the correct and relevant news to the people,” he said.
The traditional divide between a “normal” newsroom and a “digital” newsroom is fading. “It will not be two newsrooms,” he said. “It will be one newsroom.” In that integrated environment, the storyteller remains central. AI may assist with research, editing and distribution, but editorial judgement remains human.
Neeraj Mishra of Vizrt echoed the assistive narrative. India, he said, is a market of organised chaos, where news broadcasters are pushing ever-increasing volumes of content. AI will help manage scale. It is not here to replace people but to assist them.
Production barriers are already collapsing. “You don’t need a green screen to produce content now,” Mishra observed, hinting at virtual production tools and real-time rendering technologies. And this, he said, is only the beginning. In a cost-conscious market like India, AI adoption in both B to B and B to C segments is likely to rise sharply. The skills are available, he argued, the real question is whether organisations are willing to invest.
If opportunity was one half of the conversation, risk was the other. Mayuresh Konnur warned that fake news is now being peddled with alarming ease using AI tools. Deepfakes, synthetic audio and fabricated visuals can damage credibility overnight. Several journalists, he said, have already faced instances where manipulated content was circulated in their name.
“Eventually it becomes a question of how authentic you are in the market,” Konnur noted. In a crowded information economy, credibility is the ultimate moat. Regulations and clear guidelines, he argued, are necessary to curb misuse without stifling innovation.
Mishra added a note of caution against overuse. “AI should not be everywhere. It has to be used optimally,” he said. The value lies not in blanket automation but in strategic integration.
One of the most resonant metaphors came from Padmanabhan. AI, he suggested, is like a brush in a human hand. Powerful, versatile, transformative but inert without the artist. It cannot survive without the human touch.
Konnur distilled the session’s core takeaway, AI is inevitable, but the art of storytelling will never disappear.
In a media landscape defined by speed, shrinking attention spans and intense competition, the newsroom of tomorrow is not simply a technological upgrade. It is a recalibration. Between efficiency and ethics. Between automation and authenticity. Between reducing manpower and retaining meaning.
The algorithms may write cleaner copy and generate sharper graphics. They may even predict what audiences want before audiences know it themselves. But the enduring task remains unchanged to tell stories that inform, interrogate and inspire.
And for that, the human newsroom is still very much open for business.
