NDTV

• 1. Introduction

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  NDTV, the New Delhi Television network, began not as a broadcaster but as a small production house in 1984, founded by economist Prannoy Roy and journalist Radhika Roy. At the time, television in India was a state monopoly. Private companies could not own channels. They could only supply content to the government broadcaster, Doordarshan. That was the narrow opening the Roys stepped through.

  What followed over the next four decades was something remarkable: a network that would pioneer live election coverage, launch India's first independent 24-hour news channel, survive a hostile corporate takeover, withstand years of government pressure, and ultimately fall to a billionaire with close ties to the ruling establishment. The story of NDTV is inseparable from the story of Indian democracy itself. The questions the documentary will answer are specific ones. How did a production contract with a state monopoly become a national institution? What did it cost to keep the lights on and the editorial independence intact? And what happens when a free press runs out of allies?

• 2. The Doordarshan Years

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  The World This Week aired on Doordarshan every Friday at 10:00 pm, and it was unlike anything Indian audiences had seen. The programme was commissioned by Bhaskar Ghose, the director general of Doordarshan, and it was described almost immediately as an instant hit. Prannoy Roy anchored the bulletins himself, and the show became one of Doordarshan's top-rated programmes. Roy later acknowledged that appearing good alongside Doordarshan was not a high bar. He called the broadcaster "more radio than television" and said the era happened to be the "newsiest" in television history. Coverage included the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, some of which NDTV covered live.

  The bulletin aired until 1995 and was described as "the only India-based programme which looked out at the rest of the world." In 1993, CNN began collaborating with NDTV to produce select segments for the weekly show. But it was election coverage that set the network apart. The 1989 Indian general election was the first election result ever televised live in India. NDTV's format used hotlines across the country, visual graphics, and live debates. It was a stark contrast to the simple official announcements Doordarshan had run in prior elections, and broadcasters across India adopted it as a template for decades afterward.

  By 1995, NDTV had pitched Doordarshan on a daily half-hour bulletin for DD Metro, the second government channel. The proposal was accepted, and the resulting show, News Tonight, became India's first daily domestic news broadcast. To fund the expansion, Radhika Roy approached five major Indian business houses and secured agreements with all five, including the Tata Group. The financial terms between the Roys and Doordarshan had also shifted: by 1989, rather than producing content as a contractor, NDTV was paying a fee for its weekly slot. The network had quietly become a commercial operation working within a state system, waiting for that system to open up.

• 3. Star News and Editorial Tension

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  In February 1998, Star News launched as a bilingual 24-hour channel, produced entirely by NDTV under a five-year contract with Rupert Murdoch's Star Network. News Corporation's subsidiary, News Television India, provided the financing. The CEO of Star India later stated that NDTV was the obvious choice given its infrastructure and reputation. Under the contract, NDTV retained editorial independence and intellectual property rights over its productions. The initial fee was US$10 million, set to escalate.

  Star News was an immediate success. A study of Indian journalists at the time found that it was perceived as the most professionally produced network in the country, regularly watched alongside Doordarshan and BBC World. Meanwhile, Radhika Roy, described as low-profile but demanding, oversaw the editorial process and held the newsroom to high standards of credibility and impartiality. The channel's coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots included investigative reports, in-depth analysis, and live reporting. The Gujarat government, led by Narendra Modi, responded by blacking out the channel for a day. The action followed a live telecast on Zee News in which the Minister of Law, Arun Jaitley, accused unnamed networks of conspiracy against the government.

  The editorial independence that defined Star News was also the source of its tensions. Peter Mukerjea, who served as CEO of Star India between 1999 and 2007, described a situation in which an advertiser complained about an environmental report naming one of their plants. The friction between Star India's sales team, which was under pressure to protect advertiser relationships, and NDTV's editorial standards grew steadily. In 2000, the NDTV news bulletin on Star Plus was dropped. By 2002, Star was willing to renew the contract but only without granting NDTV complete editorial control. The Roys refused. NDTV continued producing for Star News until the 31st of March 2003, when the contract finally ended. Murdoch moved on, securing a partnership with the Anandabazar Patrika Group and converting Star News into a Hindi-language channel, one observers noted became far less critical in its coverage.

• 4. Going Independent

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  Before launching its own channels, NDTV invested US$25 million into advertising. The financial backing came from investment banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Standard Chartered took a 12% stake in the company for US$12 million. Media commentators at the time predicted that Star News would simply dominate and crush the new independent network.

  In 2003, NDTV launched NDTV 24x7 in English and NDTV India in Hindi on the same day. NDTV 24x7 became the frontrunner in the English news segment almost immediately. NDTV India ranked second in the Hindi segment, trailing only Aaj Tak, and pushed the former Star News channel down to fourth place in the process. The two channels introduced what they called "break away" broadcasting: integrated receiver decoders that could deliver region-specific or city-specific news, with optional local language dubbing, to viewers on the same channel. In 2004, the company went public. Its board at the time reportedly included N. R. Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, and Tarun Das, the chief mentor of the Confederation of Indian Industry. By December of that year, NDTV stood as the media company with the highest market capitalisation in India.

  The network built its brand by turning its journalists into television stars. The strategy worked for retaining talent and building audience loyalty, but it also had a cost. Managing editor Rajdeep Sardesai left to co-found CNN IBN alongside entrepreneur Raghav Bahl and CFO Sameer Manchanda. Their departure dented morale in the newsroom and left the company's advertiser relationships more exposed, since news broadcasting was the company's only revenue stream. The Sardesai departure prompted NDTV to respond with salary raises and stock options across the board, eventually extending stock options to more than 200 employees, roughly 15% of the workforce, a distribution of wealth described as unusual in the Indian broadcasting industry. By the end of 2005, the network operated 19 offices and studios across the country.

• 5. Expansion and the Great Recession

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  On the 7th of September 2007, NDTV Lifestyle launched NDTV Good Times, the first lifestyle channel in India. Smeeta Chakraborty, the CEO of NDTV Lifestyle, announced plans to expand into three to five new language markets within two years. A branding tie-up with the United Breweries Group linked the new channel to the Kingfisher lager. The company was diversifying rapidly, following the model of large media groups that used entertainment channels to subsidise news operations.

  In January 2008, NBCUniversal bought a 26% stake in NDTV at a net valuation of US$600 million for the company. The general entertainment channel NDTV Imagine launched on the 21st of January 2008. NDTV also entered a partnership with the Dhaka-based conglomerate BEXIMCO to launch Independent Television, a 24-hour news channel in Bangladesh, and partnered with The Hindu newspaper to launch a Chennai-focused English-language channel called NDTV Hindu. The company also conceptualised NDTV MetroNation, a series of city-specific news channels, though only the Delhi edition was ever launched.

  The Great Recession ended the expansion. Funds raised through partnerships and bonds ran out quickly. The stock price at the Bombay Stock Exchange fell from around 400 rupees to around 100 rupees. The Roys went through a chain of borrowings from various multinationals. By August 2009, that debt had been transferred to a shell company owned by a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. In October 2009, NBCUniversal pulled out and sold its stake back to NDTV. In December, Time Warner bought a 92% majority stake in NDTV Imagine Ltd for US$124.5 million. The Dubai-based news channel NDTV Arabia, launched in 2007, was shut down in 2009.

  The Radia tapes added a different kind of damage. Recordings made by the Income Tax Department of communications involving Reliance Industries lobbyist Niira Radia were leaked and published by Open and Outlook magazines. Journalist Barkha Dutt, one of NDTV's most prominent figures, appeared prominently in the transcripts in ways that raised questions about journalistic independence. The tapes arrived at a moment when NDTV already owed money to Reliance, making the optics considerably worse. The digital arm of the company, NDTV Convergence, would prove to be the one business that kept moving in the right direction: between March 2011 and March 2015, its revenue grew four-fold and its profits ten-fold, increasing its share of total consolidated income from 4.6% to 18%.

• 6. Government Pressure and Legal Battles

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  With Narendra Modi's ascent to the prime ministership, advertisers with NDTV began receiving pressure to disassociate from the network. The pattern of pressure took multiple legal forms simultaneously. In 2015, the Enforcement Directorate served notice alleging violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act. In 2016, the government banned NDTV India for alleged threats to national security. The ban was withdrawn the following day after public outcry, protests by journalists, and criticism from the Editor's Guild of India.

  In the same year, the Income Tax Department alleged tax evasion in the financial year 2009-10, claiming NDTV had colluded with NBCUniversal in a money laundering scheme. The Delhi bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal upheld those findings. In 2017, the CBI raided the offices of NDTV and the homes of Prannoy and Radhika Roy on allegations of defrauding ICICI Bank. The raid came one day after an NDTV presenter had argued with a spokesperson of the ruling party. The CBI case was lodged on the basis of a complaint by stockbroker Sanjay Dutt and a Sunday Guardian article that had since been retracted. ICICI Bank itself, for its part, had no complaint against NDTV and had not been given details of the case. In 2024, after the Adani Group had taken over the network, the CBI closed the case and found no wrongdoing in ICICI Bank's sanctioning of a loan of 375 crores of rupees to NDTV's founders.

  In 2019, SEBI barred the Roys from the securities market and from holding managerial or board positions for two years. In 2020, the Supreme Court of India quashed the Income Tax Department notice on the grounds that its allegations contradicted statements made by the Revenue Department itself. A survey conducted by the independent startup Prashnam in the same year found that NDTV India held the highest viewership in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan, and second-highest viewership in Madhya Pradesh, reaching around 23-24% of the population in those states.

• 7. The Adani Acquisition

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  In August 2022, the Adani Group acquired a 100% stake in Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Limited, a company that held convertible debentures in the holding company of Prannoy and Radhika Roy. Those debentures, issued in 2009, gave the holder the right to convert them into equity shares carrying a 99.5% controlling stake in RRPR Holding, which in turn owned 29.18% of NDTV. The Roys said the conversion of those warrants happened without their prior consent.

  In November 2022, the Adani Group launched an open offer and acquired an additional 8% stake, bringing its total to above 37%. In December 2022, Prannoy and Radhika Roy sold 27.26% out of their remaining 32.26% shareholding to the Adani Group, making the conglomerate the single largest shareholder with over 64.71% of the company.

  The acquisition drew widespread criticism internationally. The Economist wrote that before the takeover, NDTV was "critical of the government but is now supine." Reports in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg raised concerns about press freedom. The Delhi Union of Journalists released a statement saying two oligarchs were taking control of independent broadcasters at the behest of the ruling establishment. Presenter Ravish Kumar resigned in protest over what he described as the new owner's lack of independence from the government. He was followed by journalists Sreenivasan Jain, Nidhi Razdan, and Sarah Jacob, as well as the channel's group president Suparna Singh, Chief Strategy Officer Arijit Chatterjee, and Chief Technology and Product Officer Kawaljit Singh Bedi. On the 27th of March 2023, Adani appointed former SEBI chairman U. K. Sinha as Non-Executive Chairman of the Board alongside Welspun India CEO Dipali Goenka as independent directors.