The News Minute| June 10, 2014| 8.38 am IST
The nation has decided, bringing in its wake massive upheavals in the media. Shekhar Gupta has left the Express Group and Rajdeep Sardesai is supposed to be going on a sabbatical.
But, the one question on everyone’s lips is – where is the NATION going? Arnab Goswami, the one man-army, the human who shook man and machine, Krishna and Karim, apparently may not go anywhere, atleast not yet is what The News Minute has learnt.
As 618 million Indians were deciding what to do, so was Goswami. While he was shaking the country to smithereens every evening, there were strong rumours some months ago that India TV was in talks with him about starting a new channel. Then surfaced another story that the Star Group was planning to start an English channel and they were looking at Arnab with soft eyes and large packets. Those rumours disappeared for sometime just like Arnab’s hobby horse Bitti Mohanty! The rumour mills then said he will make his move after elections.
To be fair, Arnab has built himself and a brand from scratch. Now it may be another matter that he needs to do something other than making people jump out of their skins every evening, but Arnab has created a space for himself as India’s election face – a place previously reserved for Prannoy Roy and Sardesai. So being Times Now's face on election and raking in the TRPs was mission May.
May and elections got over, but still no move from Arnab. Now comes the sting in the tale – don’t go away. Times Now announced increments for its journalists in May instead of the habitual July setting rumour mills spinning again that this was the BCCL's efforts aimed at keeping Arnab home. But that too has dropped off like a Purulia bomb – it appears that the plan to advance the hikes came from M.K. Anand, the new CEO of Times Now Television.
So, all is calm for now. The grapevine says NATION will make his move sometime sooner or later, but there are no immediate plans. The News Minute has been told by reliable sources that if he does make a move, he will be looking to go with an international news network making foray into India like Fox News.
He has our vote. We don’t see why people living in other countries should not be getting a dose every evening. What better missile than Arnab to secure a global voice for India.