NDTV content was biased, says Star CEO

Star's growth has unnerved Times, Aaj Tak: Mukherjea

Star TV CEO Peter Mukherjea has implicitly attacked Prannoy Roy's New Delhi Television (NDTV) and accused it of being biased and hostile on certain issues when it was supplying content to Star TV.

In an interview to Business Standard, Mukherjea also hit out at media rivals and suggested that Star was impelled to come out with full page advertisements in newspapers because The Times of India and India Today did not publish their point of view.

"For the average viewer of Star News prior to March 31 (when NDTV was providing the news content) the channel may have been seen as one-sided when it came to certain issues," Mukherjea said and added that Star was making concerted efforts to redress the perception.

Mukherjea said Star earlier had no editorial control over the news content, though many accused it of being biased. "But now that the production is done in-house we see that the news content is neutral and is not seen as being one-sided."

NDTV reacted sharply to the charges. When contacted, NDTV Director KVL Narayan Rao said, "Everybody knows that Star is angling for an uplinking licence with the government, so it (the comment) should be seen in that context."

Star TV earlier had a long-term contract with NDTV to produce news content but snapped ties this year and then converted the dual-language Star News channel into a 24-hour Hindi channel.

Mukherjea explained why the Rupert Murdoch-owned company had picked on The Times of India and the India Today groups in the full-page advertisements it released recently.

He said: "I think the whole issue of corporate rivalry in the media industry is really not designed to solve a problem which exists today. Readership of these newspapers and the growth of television viewership are two different ends of the spectrum. There are only 40 million cable and satellite homes and 75 million TV homes in the country. But there are over 150 million homes. So the opportunity for growth for TV is very substantial in the years to come, which is not necessarily the case for the print medium."

Mukherjea added that that many sections of the print medium were unnerved by the awesome viewership of Star and were finding the need to "contain this viewership."

Mukherjea said Star's problems with the India Today group emanated from the declining viewership of the group's television channel Aaj Tak.

This, he said, was a result of its "losing viewership "" which independent studies have demonstrated "" and its plan to go public at a time when viewership is declining".