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With the news channel space getting increasingly cluttered, Bajaj
believes the way to get noticed is to go beyond just news and offer
the channel as an infotainment product. Aside from the news, there
will be a strong emphasis on events and current affairs programming
that is in the talk show format, says Bajaj.
The official launch, as already reported on indiantelevision.com,
is scheduled for 15 September with the interim two-week period being
utilised to fine-tune proceedings. Bajaj appears to be drawing on
his experience when he was heading the Mumbai print tabloid Daily
in the focus of coverage the channel has planned. As far as events
are concerned, it will not just be the religious and cultural events
in Mumbai (and other cities of the three states of Maharashtra,
Gujarat and Goa) that get coverage.
SPORTS EVENTS
Sports events, especially at the school level, will form a key ingredient
of Sahara Samay Mumbai's menu, according to Bajaj. "We'll have a
series of sports events in all the districts with a grand finale
in Mumbai," says Bajaj. The competitions will involve a full spread
of sports right from track and field to football and hockey, informs
Bajaj. Sahara is also bidding to tap non-urban viewers through its
events coverage and will be taking news crews to rural areas to
cover Indian sports competitions like kabbadi, kho-kho, Indian style
wrestling and bullock cart racing, to name a few, Bajaj points out.
PUBLIC GRIEVANCES
But it is Mumbai that will be the focus, affirms Bajaj. "Within
Mumbai, we will have complete and comprehensive coverage," says
Bajaj. Civic issues will be another focus area, he says, adding
that the channel would attempt to address public grievances by getting
concerned officials from various departments to respond to complaints.
BULLETINS IN FOUR LANGUAGES
While in the main, it would be "Bambayya" Hindi (as opposed
to the Sanskritised Hindi on Sahara Samay Rashtriya) that is spoken
on the channel, news bulletins in Marathi (four per day), Gujarati
(four) and English (two) are also part of the news packages.
Delivering all this news output is a 150-strong team in addition
to a stringer network covering the whole of Maharashtra, Gujarat
and a little bit of Goa, claims Bajaj. And providing the technical
back-up necessary to keep news delivery up to speed is a vast V-SAT
network that Sahara already has in place.
Also Read:
Sahara
set to soft launch two more region-specific news channels 1 September
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