News Broadcasting
ICSP to spearhead the capital’s cable ops
NEW DELHI: A fragmented cable industry is once again attempting to come together to put up a united front against the pay broadcasters in India.
Yet another cable industry body, the Independent Cable TV Service Providers (ICSP), of the National Capital Region of Delhi (NCR) has been formed. Comprising independent cable operators, as the name suggests, the organisation claims it is not a joint venture of partners or licensees of any multi- system operator (MSO).
The idea behind the new organization is to negotiate, on behalf of the members, a uniform price for pay channels, which are again set to revise upward the annual subscription rates, and act as a single-window negotiation counter.
As usual, the signatories’ list looks impressive and has been spearheaded by Vikki Choudhry, who is also the president of the Delhi based National Cable and Telecom Association.
According to Choudhry, “It is generally seen that MSOs give the pay channels to their licensees or joint venture partners at differential rates, sometimes much lower than the announced rates. This preferential treatment allows some cable operators to keep the monthly rates low. Our aim would be to negotiate a uniform price for all pay channels to all the independent cable operators not aligned with any MSO.”
However, it is still not clear how the broadcasters and MSOs would react to this new initiative of the independent cable ops. A senior executive of a broadcaster operating pay channels, in a cautious reaction, says, “We’d have to wait and watch to see what this is all about and how this newly-formed body, as you are saying, takes up issues as we have not heard anything formally.”
Choudhry, however, points out that Monday onwards, a formal communication would go out to broadcasters on the ICSP’s demands.
The following are the resolutions adopted at the first meeting of the ICSP:
* Give collective payments of the amounts payable by each of the undersigned/ members to be paid to pay TV broadcasters by the “consortium” or CSPO before the due dates.
* The consortium shall act as ” one window” through which its members shall make the payments to the pay channels.
* All the members will stand together and act in a manner that shall be beneficial for the interest of its members and in the interest of the consumers at large.
* All negotiations / dealings /execution of service contracts and other work with the pay channels will be done jointly by the select committee on behalf of all the ICSP consortium members.
The committee members include Choudhry, Raaj Mutereja, Inderjeet Singh, Brijesh K Sharma, Sanjeev Sachdeva, Singh Raj, Suresh Yadav, Anil Dargan, Rajeshwar Choudhary and Satish Saini.
The signatories to the resolution include independent cable ops like Cablevision Network’s Inderjeet S, Trinetravision’s Anil Khera, Brijesh Sharma of Home Cable TV Network in Ghaziabad on the outskirts of Delhi, WAC Star’s Satish Sharma , Arcy Cable TV Network’s Sushil Kumar Katon and Pradeep Arora, Mohan Electronics’ Inder Mohan, Citiview Cable [P] Ltd, Gurgaon’s Sanjeev Sachdeva, Sanjay Dosajh of Channel “n” Channel Cable Network in Gurgaon, Bobby Skylines’ Vikas Tyagi, Videospectrum’s Dinesh Bidichandani, Satellite Vision’s Rajeshwar, Multivision’s Ashok Sharma, Skychannel’s Sunil Sasan, Multivision Network’s Aditya Sharma, Avdhesh Sharma of Priyadarshni Cable TV Network in Ghaziabad and Cable Quest magazine owner Roop Sharma.
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.
