Arnab Goswami’s Hindi news brand, Republic Bharat, has announced its arrival on the Hindi news landscape in a grand fashion. The news channel has performed pretty well in its first week and has registered a mind-boggling reach of 73 million in such a brief period. It has indeed made a fiery start among the Hindi news channels. Vikas Khanchandani, CEO, Republic Network seemed satisfied with the kind of entry that Republic Bharat has made in the Hindi genre. He said, “We are extremely happy that Republic Bharat has opened the charts with a massive 73 Mn reach in its maiden week. Our distribution and content teams have worked very hard to give us this fantastic start within the mass reach genre. The reach garnered is the highest that any new hindi channel launch has delivered in its opening week in the last 3 years. I am extremely confident that with this magnificent start the channel will move into the top slot much faster than I anticipated. I am extremely grateful to our audiences and partners that have helped us with their support and acceptance within the Hindi news category.”
The highlight of this new Hindi News channel turned out to be Republic Bharat’s Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami’s, 7 PM debate show, Poochta Hai Bharat. It registered the highest reach in the genre. Republic Bharat stressed extensively upon big stories which created a tremendous impact. #MamtaBlocksCBI and #ShardaStings not only delivered in terms of impressions on the Social Media but also got Republic Bharat #2 position in the state of West Bengal.
Earlier in an interview, Arnab Goswami was asked why viewers would want to watch Republic Bharat. To this, he had replied, “We are going to bring back the focus on news in Hindi. I am horrified with the trends in Hindi news; it is going down every day. Some of those who call themselves leading channels are doing snake and ladder journalism.” While speaking about the viewership and revenue targets, he had said, “The channel is targeting 150 million viewers. We are targeting a significant revenue pie as we’ll be expanding the viewership of Hindi TV news.”
It seems that Arnab Goswami’s viewpoint about bringing the focus back on Hindi news has turned out to be correct. Republic Bharat has worked wonders and the kind of viewership levels that it has achieved in its first week is absolutely astounding. This substantiates the fact that the viewers are rejecting the irresponsible and sensational form of journalism being promoted by the Lutyens’ media. Republic Bharat has provided the kind of alternate journalism that was always needed in the case of Hindi news genre. Therefore, Republic Bharat is gaining from that substantial set of viewers which was already fed up of the falling standards of journalism and was eagerly waiting for a media outlet providing high standards of journalism.
Republic TV was launched in May 2017 and the kind of success it got is unbelievable. Now, it seems that Republic Bharat is going to achieve in the Hindi News genre what Republic TV has achieved in the English News genre. With the Lok Sabha polls around the corner, one can expect the viewership levels of Republic Bharat to only go up from here. It has announced its arrival in a ground-breaking fashion and things are only going to get better for it from hereon.