The months preceding General Elections 2019 was one of optimism for news professionals with new avenues and job opportunities opening up. However, the post-election mahual in the news media landscape has been anything but.

Within a month of election results, Reliance Industries-owned weekly, Firstpost, shut shop, Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s Asianet News pulled out of My Nation, Newscentral is looking for funds with many contributors opting out. The story of Tiranga TV, one of the most-talked-about pre-election new entrants, is more or less the same, and a cautionary one at that: It speaks of the perils of an ad-dependent business model for news.

Its birthing troubles aside, with seasoned anchors like Barkha Dutt and Karan Thapar, Tiranga TV was to present an alternative to the shouty primetime shows that have become the norm on TV news. While major news channels like Republic TV and Times Now were batting for the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, it was also expected that with entrants like Tiranga TV, voices from the Opposition would get a platform—courtesy the channel’s Kapil Sibal connection. It appears, though, that there are no takers in the market for such a platform. Quite literally.

No takers for Tiranga

Tiranga TV has zero advertisements to speak of. The two days that we watched the news channel, the only ads that played during commercial breaks were Tiranga TV’s promos. While most channels have a bevy of brands advertising on primetime shows, Tiranga TV has remained brand-free, so to speak.

For television channels, there are primarily two sources of revenue—subscription and advertisements. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s latest annual report, in 2017-2018, subscription revenues accounted for 59.5 per cent of Indian television industry’s overall revenue, while the rest was advertising.

The absence of advertisements on Tiranga TV, thus, means the loss of an important revenue source. The story becomes starker when you look at the company documents.

Tiranga TV employees were contracted by Analog Media Pvt Ltd, a company which was incorporated on September 10, 2017. The company is responsible for digital content as well as the shows broadcast on the channel.

The licence that permits Tiranga TV to uplink and downlink is owned by Veecon Media and Broadcasting Pvt Ltd, a company which also owns the trademark for the channel’s name and logo. In the words of Deepak Choudhry, Veecon’s president and one of the promoters of Tiranga TV, the two companies—Analog and Veecon—have an “arrangement for digital and other content”. They also have an advertisement revenue-sharing contract.

Company documents list Promilaa Sibal (Congress leader Kapil Sibal’s wife), Arun Khosla (Mr Sibal’s brother-in-law), and a Mr Nirmal Singh as directors of Analog. While Ms Sibal and Mr Singh have been directors since the beginning—October 9, 2017, to be precise—Mr Khosla came to be a director about a year back, on May 25, 2018.

During the 2017-2018 financial year (FY), Ms Sibal held over 99 per cent of the company shares, while Mr Singh owned the rest. However, in the absence of company documents for the following year, the impact of Mr Kholsa’s appointment on Ms Sibal’s shareholding is unclear. At the end of the 2017-18 FY, the company had over ₹2 crore-worth of unsecured loan.

The company’s “revenue from operations” was listed as Rs 0, while “other income” was ₹192. Its total expenses during this period was over ₹3 lakh, and it recorded a loss of over ₹2.6 lakh. The company’s “net cash flow from operating” was in the negative, just over ₹3 crore. It is important to note that Tiranga TV went live on January 26, earlier this year, but Analog Media had started setting up the newsroom as early as in June, last year. With 2018-19 financial documents yet to be filed, details of how operations impacted the company’s financials are unclear.

It is important to note that Mr Sibal is not listed as a promoter or director in company records. The only apparent link between Analog Media and Kapil Sibal is the address of a company, Grande Castello Private Limited. The registered address for both Analog Media and Grande Castello is 4-JK, 4th floor, DCM Building, 16, Barakhamba Road.

Grande Castello has five directors/signatories. This includes Promilaa Sibal and Nirmal Singh (who are also directors at Analog), Kapil Sibal and two others.

An uncertain future

Over the last one month, Tiranga TV laid off over two dozen employees in two rounds of layoffs from across departments.

This included those from production, editorial, admin, technical and digital teams. In the first round that took place between June 19-21, at least 15 employees were let go. The first round of layoffs also saw the closure of two Tiranga TV bureaux, in Kashmir and Ahmedabad. In the second round that began earlier this month, the list of employees to be laid-off included over 20 names.

The standard approach to the layoffs was a communication to meet the HR, followed by an explanation of poor financial health of the company, information about the employee’s termination, accompanied by a bonafide letter and cheque in quick succession. Employees were paid one-month salary and relieved immediately. The notice period was waived off.

The employees who were let go were largely on probation. Termination period varied between three to 30 days in the probation clause in four of the contracts that Newslaundry accessed.

The layoffs were met with protests from employees, who claimed that they were kept in the dark about the channel’s future.

On a humid Wednesday afternoon, last week, more than a dozen Tiranga TV employees had gathered outside the Majestic building in Noida. Until a few days back, these employees were largely working in the Tiranga TV newsroom located on the second and third floor of this building.

As the group waited for more people to reach, they were greeted by some of their former colleagues. Some had come to express solidarity, some just to catch up. The conversations were brief and amicable. They did reveal one underlying tension: who will be next?

At some time, a poster is circulated on Twitter and WhatsApp groups about a silent protest outside the Press Club of India. The poster reads: “All are invited to join silent protest for our rights.”

At about 1.30 pm, the group headed off to the Press Club of India, where a few more joined them. The conversation en route was about compensations, lack of prior information, scarcity of jobs in the media industry, options available to laid-off employees of a private newsroom and some banter.

Employees told Newslaundry that layoffs are inevitable when a company isn’t doing well, but the lack of heads-up was perplexing.

Once outside the Press Club, the protestors held up posters that read “silent protest” and “we want proper compensation”, among other things. These employees have depended on social media not only to share their demands but also gather support. Social media is also this group’s way of reaching out to senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal.

Why Sibal, I ask? “When the company ran into trouble last September, it was Mr Sibal who had given us assurances about job security,” one employee said. While he may not be a promoter on paper, he was deeply involved, another chipped in. A bunch of others standing around nodded in agreement.

The protestors also submitted a memorandum of appeal to the Sibals.

The subject line reads “demand for proper compensation”. Written on a piece of plain white paper, the memorandum asks for six month’s salary. It also offers an explanation for the specificity of this demand. “We had left some really good opportunities to join this venture as we were promised that it will run for around/at least three years. We all have families to look after and with the current situation in the industry, we might not be able to get something so soon,” the letter states.

But the contract that Tiranga employees had signed offers only a period of maximum 30 days as a notice period. Newslaundry has read four of the contracts.

Several employees that Newslaundry spoke with quoted the HR as saying that the layoffs weren’t performance-based. When Newslaundry reached out to Tiranga TV’s HR Pradeep Gulati, he declined to comment.

Veecon president Deepak Choudhry, while adding that Veecon did not have much to do with the layoffs, said: “I will tell you one thing…they (Analog) are doing some kind of review as far as their operations and costs are concerned.” These reviews include measures such as “manpower restructuring”… “to reduce costs and run the operations correctly”, he explained. He added that this meant parting ways with “not all, but some employees”. He said, “Analog and Veecon jointly felt that in order to run the channel Tiranga, we need to renovate some new skill sets and new areas.”

He said that all clauses stated in employee appointment letters, agreements as well as consultancy contracts have been honoured. “I don’t think even a single employee can say that it has not been honoured and if any employee or consultant feels that any clause has not been honoured or any commitment has not been honoured, he or she can always take the legal recourse.”

While the laid-off employees feel let down—according to them, the promise was that the company will run for around/at least three years, as the memorandum states—it is unlikely that they will take the legal route.

As for Tiranga TV, the going looks tough. In an atmosphere where the governing party blocked ads to The Times of India, The Telegraph and The Hindu for its critical reportage, the channel’s perceived proximity to a down-and-out Congress party means that not just the government of the day, but even brands would not want to associate themselves with it.

The author would like to acknowledge Pradipta Barik and Kamlesh Kumar for their inputs.