News Broadcasting
Zee TV still banking on SEC B&C
MUMBAI: Zee TV still feels that focusing on SEC B and C segments, primarily the Indian middle class, would drive in the ratings at a time when the other entertainment channels are lining up programmes designed to cater to the urban SEC A and B audiences.
“Zee TV has been an SEC B & C channel and will continue to be so, Essel Group corporate brand development head Ashish Kaul tells indiantelevision.com.
Kaul also offers an explanation for sticking with the SEC B& C segments: Our subscription revenue has gone
up over the last couple of months and this seems to indicate that our viewership has increased too. Unfortunately, it is not reflecting on the ratings, but we are not too hassled by this fact.
Pointing out that Astitva too was aimed at SEC B&C segments though it coincidentally enjoyed good viewership in SEC A segment too, Kaul says, “We are not targeting the urban or niche market through Zee TV. Our main focus has been and will continue to be the middle class Hindi heartland.”
With the channel’s talent hunt India’s Best Cinestar Ki Khoj having inched its way into the all-India Top 100 list with ratings between 2 and 2.5, Zee TV seems to have ruffled up some competition for Sony ‘s strong weekend products and is tweaking its fixed point chart to get better results and ratings too.
But that again is something that Zee dismisses as sheer coincidence. For all official purposes, it’s the SEC B& C segments that Zee TV is continuing to target.
Zee TV plans to garner viewership from children. The channel is looking at launching an animated series, Chi & Me, on 15 November at 6:30 p.m.
The ET- inspired animated strip would have a cute alien ‘Chi’ bonding with a child protagonist and this fare would extend the kids band by another half an hour.
As for luring the grown ups, the channel is putting on air a supernatural thriller, Rooh, from today at 8 p.m.
The move to introduce a thriller series on weekends had been a much-planned move. Since Rooh doesn’t have ‘blood and gore’, the channel is optimistic there would be no problems with the serial at a fairly early evening slot.
Zee’s answer to Sony’s Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahi, Kareena Kareena, which airs Monday to Thursday 9:30 p.m., has seen fairly good opening numbers, 1.17-1 TRP’s for the CS 4 + in the Hindi speaking market, during its debut
week.
Although Zee TV denies any pre-planned move to target Sony, the new launches, particularly their timings, suggest otherwise. According to the channel, Kareena Kareena is about aspirations of a small town girl.
Meanwhile, with India’s Best having reached its penultimate stage (the grand finale is tentatively scheduled for 3 December), Zee TV is gearing up for its next reality show, Business Baazigar.
For the proposed reality show, Zee TV is slowly initiating ground promotions at busy malls across the country and other such community places. It has been claimed that close to 25,000 entries have already been received. About 125 best entries would be shortlisted for the television event.
Will the programming efforts help Zee TV regain some of the lost glory and capture viewer’s attention in its traditional base of SEC B&C segments? That’s something only time will tell.
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.
