NDTV to bring down curtains on NDTV Profit

It will become a full time infotainment and entertainment channel

Prannoy Roy’s New Delhi Television, which runs news and lifestyle channels, will be taking its english business news channel, NDTV Profit off-air from Monday, June 5. 

The channel, which was turned into a hybrid of business news and entertainment, will become a full-time infotainment and entertainment channel, the company said in a statement to stock exchanges. The channel underwent a revamp three years ago, becoming a hybrid channel known as NDTV Profit/Prime. It will now be called NDTV Prime.

Prannoy Roy, executive co-chairperson, NDTV Ltd, said, “NDTV has decided to transfer its business programming from Profit to regular business and finance segments on NDTV 24x7. This will mean suspending the current trading hours programming on Profit while Prime will continue as a channel.”

The statement said NDTV did not rule out reviving a business channel when the circumstances were appropriate. “For now, there will be high quality business and finance segments on NDTV 24x7 which will enhance viewer experience on NDTV 24x7 during daytime trading hours,” the company said. 

Sources revealed that the reason for shutting the business news part of the channel was to cut costs and maximise the potential of entertainment content. However, the website profit.ndtv.com would continue its coverage of business and markets. The company’s Hindi news channel, NDTV India, would also continue to operate as usual. 

Under the revamp announced in 2014, NDTV Profit/Prime aired features and entertainment content after 6pm every day and over the weekends. At launch, NDTV Prime followed the band strategy for programming with half an hour to one-hour bands dedicated to a particular genre. This included some of the existing programmes from NDTV Profit (more feature-led programmes) and a spate of fresh programming.

According to the latest BARC India data (Week 21; May 20 to May 26, 2017), NDTV Profit/Prime was at number three in the English Business News genre with 96,000 impressions (number of people watching the channel at any given point of telecast), behind ET Now (438,000 impressions) and CNBC TV18 (397,000 impressions). 

The group posted a net loss of Rs 68.7 crore in FY17, marginally higher than FY16’s net loss of Rs 64.8 crore. Also, the second half of the financial year 2016-17 was heavily impacted by demonetisation when many advertisers pulled back on ad spends.