Media Moghul Rupert Murdoch's company has withdrawn its stake from TV news business in India. It has sold all its stakes in three news channels: Star News (Hindi), Star Ananda (Bengali) and Star Majha (Marathi) to Ananda Bazaar Patrika Group, the other owners of the joint venture.
After Murdoch's Star India's sale of stakes, Star News is coming up as ABP News from June 1, 2012; ABP for Ananda Bazaar Patrika. Similarly, Bengali news channel Star Ananda would be ABP Ananda and Marathi news channel Star Majha would be ABP Majha.
This allows Rupert Murdoch-controlled Star India to retreat from the news business in India to focus on entertainment.
STAR India claims to reach over 168 million people every week across India and over 65 countries across the globe through its 32 channels in eight languages. In addition to STAR branding, It is also lately diversifying business through another brand Life OK.
Murdoch's company has worked with many Indian media houses to hold its feet in India and expand the business throughout South Asia. To hold feet in India, it worked with the Zee group before breaking up in 1999.
Star News was launched on March 15, 2004 as a first bilingual (English - Hindi) news service and was initially run in partnership with NDTV. But when the agreement with the NDTV expired, it partnered with Ananda Bazaar Patrika, another influential media house in India and publisher of centenarian Ananda Bazaar Patrika newspaper.
(Some of the information used in the article are from Wikipedia).
No comments:
Post a Comment