MAM
Sahara merges all its news bureaux; targets Bihar channel launch this month
MUMBAI: The news channel business of the Sahara group is undergoing a revamp after some top level executive reshuffle.
For starters, all the bureaus of the region-specific and national news channels are being merged to bring in more synergy and avoid duplication of responsibilities.
Hence forth, a TV news bureau will not only report for the region specific channels, but also double up for the national channel, Sahara Samay Rashtriya, if need be.
What’s more, the print medium bureaus (working for Sahara group’s newspapers and weeklies)would also chip in with their bit for the electronic medium venture.
Confirming the development to indiantelevision.com, Sahara’s Prabhat Dabral (who holds additional charge of the national news channel after Arup Ghose and Shireen quit) said, “Yes, we have re-organised the Sahara news bureaus and have made it one news gathering system for out print and television endeavours.”
Dwelling on the reason for this restructuring, Dabral said the mergers were done to optimise the group’s resources. “The aim is to avoid confusion and have more synergy,” he added.
So there would be no separate Sahara UP bureau and Sahara Rashtriya bureau as was the case earlier. From now on, all reports would be filed under the tagline Sahara Samachar.
As part of the revamping, the Bihar-specific news channel too is being launched later this month.
Pointing out that a final date for the formal launch has not yet been decided, Dabral said that the channel’s dry runs of a few hours has already started with the day-long run starting few days later.
The Bihar channel is being launched to coincide with the elections being held in the state early next year.
At the moment, Sahara has four news channels, including one for Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
