The Making of Star India by Vanita Kohli-Khandekar

Author:Vanita Kohli-Khandekar [Kohli-Khandekar, Vanita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353055981
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-07-24T18:30:00+00:00

Cracks begin to appear

In late 2001 and early 2002, Mukerjea was scouting around for a head for Star News, the channel it would launch after its break-up with NDTV. Raj Nayak, who was head of ad sales, evinced interest in the job. Mukerjea wanted someone from outside the company. The reasons he gave for this were different to different people—he needed a fall guy if the project failed, he wanted another senior programming person as backup. Whatever the logic, his decision to hire Ravina Raj Kohli didn’t go down well with many in the core team.

Kohli (no relation of mine) was the successful former programming head for Sony. She then became CEO of Nine Gold, which won a three-hour slot on DD Metro, DD’s then second general entertainment channel (it later became DD News). The slot was licensed to HFCL-Channel Nine Broadcasting, a joint venture between Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited and Australian media baron Kerry Packer’s Channel Nine. The slot did very well, but the contract, which ended in October 2001, was not renewed. Kohli had set up her own production firm when Mukerjea met her. To Mukerjea she seemed like a good choice given her experience in dealing with the government and the fact that she was not a journalist. He wanted someone who would figure out the tabloid part of the channel. Kohli joined Star News as president in April 2002. That was when the first cracks started to appear in a winning team.

‘We were all executive vice presidents, she came in as president. To soothe feathers Sameer was made COO. But the way it was handled left a bad taste. It was not about who made it; at that time everybody was deserving. It was not discussed, not told. So I decided to leave,’ says Nayak. He later took up the NDTV offer to head their news business. This became the cause of litigation between Star and Nayak since there was a non-compete clause in his contract. ‘Peter brought Ravina [in] as a foil. That upset Sameer and Raj. Raj wanted the Star News job. From then on the rift started. On the executive floor, there was a wall between Peter and Sameer,’ says Sumantra Dutta, who was heading Radio City.

To this undercurrent of conflict add a few other factors.

Star News had taken off. Kohli had done a good job getting the tone and tenor of the channel right. With shows such as Vir Ke Teer, an hour-long show that took a look at the story behind a big news break, and Masand Ki Pasand, with film critic Rajeev Masand, Star News was getting the right mix of high-quality, non-serious journalism. Television critics, especially media writers, sneered at it as another example of Murdoch’s tendency to dumb down.

But this was a different market. In February 1998, when Star News first launched, there was no twenty-four-hour news channel—now there were more than half a dozen. (In fact, India currently has a staggering 400-plus news channels, most of them appallingly compromised or plain terrible.

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