News Broadcasting
M J Akbar gives viewers the inside dope on politics on Star News
MUMBAI: 24-hour Hindi news channel Star News has announced that it will launch Akbar Ka Darbar on 25 May. The show will air every Sunday at 8 pm. Best described as ‘Inside Politics’, the one hour weekly aims at redefining the way the viewer looks at political events. After hearing the ‘what’ in the news, viewers can now learn the ‘why’.
The show host is columnist and well known author M J Akbar, the founder and editor of The Asian Age, as well as the founding editor of Sunday India’s first political weekly.
On the programme, he takes on politicians, legal luminaries, business tycoons and high flying journalists that haunt the corridors of North and South Block on issues that dominate the Indian political scene.
The highlight of the show is Capital Gang which has Akbar with his colleagues from the media in animated discussion on the inside track of our politicians – a satirical view of who moved up and who moved down that week. Other segments include Your Story – the personal story of an Indian citizen which in its larger perspective has a bearing on the system, and On the Boil – about a festering problem that eludes an easy solution.
News Broadcasting
Times Network to air JVC Exit Poll across 5 regions on April 29
Four-hour broadcast spans states and Puducherry with data-led analysis
MUMBAI: Times Network is set to roll out what it calls one of its most expansive election programming efforts yet, culminating in the JVC Exit Poll on 29 April, with a multi-hour broadcast spanning key poll-bound regions.
The exit poll will air across Times Now and Times Now Navbharat, beginning at 5pm and 4pm respectively. Co-powered by Vedanta and Jindal Stainless, the programming aims to combine on-ground reportage with data-driven projections across West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
The network has deployed over 50 journalists across these regions, gathering voter sentiment and local insights in the run-up to polling. The effort builds on its ongoing election formats such as Election Yatra and Election Premier League, which have tracked campaign narratives and community-level issues.
In parallel, Times Now Navbharat has focused on constituency-level reporting in West Bengal through its Jan Gan ka Mann series, capturing voter opinions across diverse segments.
The coverage has also featured interviews with prominent political leaders. Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Congress leaders Ramesh Chennithala and V D Satheesan have appeared on the network’s election specials. From Tamil Nadu, voices including deputy chief minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran, BJP leader K Annamalai and NTK’s Seeman have also featured in discussions.
On the day of the exit poll, the network’s primetime anchors, including Navika Kumar, Zakka Jacob and Sumit Awasthi, will lead the coverage. They will be joined by a panel of political analysts, psephologists and senior journalists offering real-time insights and interpretation of trends.
The programming will integrate grassroots reportage with analytics from the JVC Exit Poll, aiming to give viewers an early sense of electoral outcomes ahead of the official results on 4 May.
With its combined English and Hindi broadcast reach, Times Network is positioning this effort as a comprehensive look at voter sentiment, blending field reporting, data and debate to decode what could lie ahead when the final mandate is revealed.
