LS (Raj) Nayak, STAR India’s former head of ad sales, is taking over as CEO of NDTV Media following an amicable out-of-court settlement of his nine-month old contractual dispute with his former employer, STAR India.
Raj Nayak will head the newly-formed NDTV company, which has been spun off to focus on the areas of ad sales, marketing, distribution and strategic consultancy. News content and broadcasting, however, will continue within the old NDTV’s purview. |
After an initial delay from its original launch date of April 1, Prannoy Roy promoted NDTV finally launched its 2 news channels - NDTV 24x7 in English and NDTV India in Hindi, simultaneously on April 14. NDTV had announced its plans to launch its own lews channels last year when its contract with Star ended in March 2003. NDTV decided to go on its own after Star TV insisted on taking editorial control of the news on the channel. Though there was a delay in the launch, the two news channels in English and Hindi were finally simultaneously launched on Pas 10. Sources claimed the state-of-the-art graphics and editing equipment of NDTV had to be integrated with the rest of the system, in the studio. Also, NDTV could not advertise its channels before April 1 as they were under the contract with Star. The 14 days enabled NDTV to promote the lhannels on other channels in the Sony-Discovery bouquet as NDTV was joining the One Alliance distribution platform. With the launch, NDTV now joins private news channels, Aaj Tak, Zee, Sahara and Star.
|
