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According to Star News sources, the first phase could take up to
six months time for completion.
Indiantelevision.com has learnt from a source that this gradual
shifting of base to Delhi has got necessitated due to various reasons,
including sourcing and nurturing of manpower for the Hindi news
channel that primarily comes from North India.
The board of Media Content & Communications Services Pvt. Ltd
(MCCS), which manages Star News and its Bengali sibling Star Ananda,
has in principle given the green signal for this move taking into
account various factors. MCCS is also setting up a committee that
would look into the costing and feasibility of re-locating to Delhi.
However, the ad sales and marketing ops of Star News, which has
been snapping at the heels of news market leader Aaj Tak from time
to time, will stay put in Mumbai. Keeping in tune with this, it
is expected that MCCS chief executive Uday Shankar will flit between
Delhi and Mumbai as he’s also involved in content creation on a
daily basis.
MCCS is a 26:74 joint venture between the Rupert Murdoch-owned
Star Group and the Kolkata-based Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP TV).
When Star News began afresh, after having severed content relationship
with NDTV in 2003, it based its headquarters in Mumbai. Ravina Raj
Kohli, the then president of the news channel, was heading a vision
of creating an entity that would take on the likes of NDTV and Aaj
Tak from Mumbai, which
is known more as the hub of India’s financial and entertainment
activities.
Kohli had then pointed out that Star News, based in Mumbai with
Delhi positioned as a ‘super bureau’, was modeled on Fox News in
the US that is headquartered in New York, while Washington, the
base for all political news and developments, served as a `super
bureau.’
At present, most news channels having national presence in India
are based in and around Delhi from where most political and policy-level
news emanate.
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