Republic TV to launch with eight sponsors

Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV will ‘soon’ launch with eight ‘founding partners’ -- eight brands that have decided to associate with the upcoming television channel. The names are Vivo, Jio Digital Life, Renault, Hike, Ola, Star India, Yes Bank and Microsoft.

While a formal announcement on the association is yet to come, the channel’s Chief Executive Officer, Vikas Khanchandani, was seen promoting these pictures on his personal social media page. The two images (above) look like teaser campaigns of the launch of the channel and the comeback of the well-known anchor -- Goswami.

Attempts to get further details went answered, as the channel’s promoters and management refused to comment at this stage. However, sources close to the development confirmed that the channel will go on air in the first week of May. It acquired the licence on March 1, 2017.

The channel had started putting up teaser campaigns at the beginning of April, wherein Goswami was seen telling prominent names that he is coming back with his type of journalism. He takes the names of Vijay Mallya, Rahul Gandhi, Ravindra Gaikwad and Raj Thackeray. The latest one is to the Muslim Personal Law Board.

To Vijay Mallya

Arnab Goswami is Back

To Mr Gaikwad and Mr Thackeray

To Rahul Gandhi

Apart from the teaser campaigns, the channel has also heavily advertised on the outdoor platforms, with a major thrust in Tamil Nadu. A veteran media expert observed, “The anchor was quite confident, or, should I say, over confident that he is the best and most vibrant news brand in the country. He never felt the need of marketing, but seeing the full throttle on the outdoor platform speaks a lot. The special interest in the southern state might be because of its high TV consumption nature. Getting big brands as advertisers right at the start of the channel is something commendable, I must say.”

Goswami is ready to enter the Rs 2,000 crore TV news market. The English space within the TV news genre is growing significantly as the country is taking steady steps towards complete digitisation. Goswami had recently highlighted the issue of not being able to use the phrase ‘Nation wants to know’. He had reportedly said that a media group had threatened him to not use the phrase under the trademark act.

Times Network, the group in this case, had also issued a statement clarifying, “ARG Outliers had filed for trademark for these and similar phrases that were already filed for and extensively used for years by Times Now. We have responded with a standard caution notice. He is just trying to gain sound bytes from it.”

Goswami had parted ways with Times Network, his employer for 12 years, after which he associated with ARG Outlier Media, the company that is launching Republic TV.

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