TV, Digital News Can No Longer Be Isolated Businesses: Raghav Bahl

Bahl’s new venture BloombergQuint – a joint venture between Bahl’s Quintillion Media and Bloomberg LP.

Raghav Bahl, Founder of TheQuint.com. (Photo: The Quint)

Raghav Bahl feels the time is right to re-enter the TV news business, as he prepares to take on the broadcast space once again.

“It is a different time, space and era. You can be far more strategic now. I have learnt several things from my past journey,” says Bahl in an interview to Television Post about his new venture BloombergQuint – a joint venture between Bahl’s Quintillion Media and Bloomberg LP.

Quintillion Media is the parent company of TheQuint.com.

Quintillion Media’s Raghav Bahl and Bloomberg Media International’s Parry Ravindranathan. (Photo: The Quint)

The article titled “The Second Coming of Raghav Bahl” traces his journey in the early years when he founded CNBC-TV18, which kickstarted the television business news genre in India.

In an odd twist of fate, Bahl will compete against the first television channel that he so successfully launched. <i>CNBC-TV18</i>, which rolled out the TV business news genre in India, is by far the highest revenue-earning English business news channel in the country. As he goes out to bat in the second innings, there are new things that have come Bahl’s way. He will have Bloomberg as a 26% equity partner right from the start.

When Bahl gets his new channel out of the gate, it will be pitched against not just old warhorse <i>CNBC-TV18</i> but also <i>ET Now</i>, <i>NDTV Profit/Prime</i> and Anil Ambani’s channel, which will have to go with a new name after splitting from Bloomberg.

A lot has changed since those initial years when Bahl started the building blocks of what became one of India’s largest media empires – namely, the evolution of the digital space.

Television and digital news feeds can no longer be isolated businesses. It will be wrong to look at us as a company that is doing television as well as digital. We are going to feed into each other; we are an integrated news outlet, everything will be part of a content hub. We will draw revenue streams from each other.

Bahl to <i>Television Post</i>

“Bahl is known to attract the best talent in the industry,” notes the article.

He has tapped <i>CNBC-TV18</i> head Anil Uniyal as <i>BloombergQuint’s</i> CEO. On the editorial front, he has roped in <i>CNBC-TV18</i> executive editor Menaka Doshi as managing editor while <i>CNBC-TV18</i> deputy national news editor Sajeet Manghat has come in as national news editor.

Click here to read the full Television Post article.