How Arnab Used Negative PR to His Advantage to Stay On Top

Arnab Goswami launched Republic TV less than two weeks ago and the channel has already captured 52 percent market share as per Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) data, with Times Now at number two position with 25 percent market share. In the prime time category ( 9pm to 11pm), Arnab’s Republic holds 56 percent market share, with a dismal 22 percent for Times Now.This data came as a surprise to the industry that thrives on these ratings. Basically, in a 3,500 crore rupees advertisement driven industry, only the top two make money. Hence, the competition is stiff.Republic’s Red Carpet EntryThe channel’s debut on 6 May was no less than a grand red carpet entry. Every news follower was waiting for Arnab to go live, on-air, with rising expectation.In the usual Arnab Goswami style, Republic TV opened full house with top breaking news that the industry hadn’t even imagined – The Sunanda Pushkar murder story and Lalu-Shahabuddin Expose. And the response was magnificent.Arnab is the most ill-famed journalist in the country for his blustering style and ‘views over news’ approach. There are very few people one ever comes across, who would vehemently support his style of journalism. Some mock his ‘Nation wants to know’ rant, while many find him intolerable on-air.That said, Arnab has never ceased to occupy the top slot, whether it was with his former employer Times Now or his new venture Republic TV. Arnab continues to rule the news space like an undisputed king. So what works in favour of this journalist who doesn’t shy away from calling himself and his team loose cannons. Why is it so that his journalism of activism, opinion, and commentary, pegged with chaotic and loud panel discussions have always managed to keep his channel at number one?Also Read: Brijesh Kalappa Reveals His Side of the 6-Min Call with ArnabNegative Publicity is Good PublicityArnab and his strategy behind running India’s top news channel is based on the theory that negative publicity is also good publicity. No matter how strange this may sound, the truth remains that the only thing worse than being talked about negatively is not being talked about at all.In a mad race of 390 odd news channels that the audience is over-served with, there has to be a strategy that separates one news organisation from the other.Being a veteran in the space, Arnab knew what would act as a clincher for his news channel in the environment of sensational and biased reportage.He had understood that to be able to make that dent in the existing market share that his competitors hold, he had to build a news channel that emerged as the voice of the common man. Hence, he picked activism over journalism.And it is evident in the stories and campaigns running on his former channel. For instance, the quest for the absconding Bitti Mohanty. The son of former Odisha DGP was on the run after raping a German tourist in Alwar. Times Now ran the campaign for close to two months consistently, leading to the arrest of Bitti from north Kerala.There are several other stories that Arnab covered on his former channel that stirred the emotions of its audience that had almost lost faith in the fourth estate. The audience began to view Arnab as their voice and an icon of citizen journalism, amid Delhi’s alleged paid media.Therefore, with the rising decibel of the noise on his channel, the audience continued to love Times Now over others. At the end, the audience will believe what it sees.How would an average Indian audience gauge the big ticket strategy behind running India’s top news channels? Every time Arnab screamed ‘ India wants to know’ on air, every Indian watching his The Newshour felt it was his show, and Arnab, would pose their questions to the panel. That personal touch led to increasing viewership, despite people not approving his vociferous style of anchoring.Somehow, despite knowing well that the answers they sought as audience were often lost in the studio commotion, Times Now continued to remain people’s favourite English news channel for years, until Arnab started Republic TV.This only indicates that Arnab used negative publicity carefully in his favour and managed to create an irreplaceable spot for himself in India’s news space.Also Read: Rival Channels Leave BARC, Arnab’s Republic TV Hits BackArnab’s Top-Heavy ApproachSince Arnab launched Times Now on 31 January 2006, he made sure that his channel does not come across as top-heavy. This too was a well thought-out strategy to mix bad publicity with some positive pegs.The audience has seen only reporter-driven coverage, where young reporters are made to front big news breaks. This approach was also very different from the rest in the industry. Those who follow other news channels will also know that in the event of big news breaks, like the 26/11 Mumbai attack, only the channel’s top journalists were seen reporting from ground zero. It was only Times Now that had sent a group of young reporters on ground and made them the face of that particular coverage. This made Times Now popular amid younger audience.Arnab Comparable to Amitabh BachchanAlso, those who know Arnab personally will vouch for the fact that his angry crusader avatar on TV is opposite of what he is in real life.By donning the angry activist avatar on-air, he intentionally managed to curate an indisputable spot for himself among his peers who wore a poised and well-informed look on-air, that seemed extremely overdone.It won’t be wrong to compare him with Amitabh Bachchan, who gave his peers a run for their money with his new angry young man avatar with Zanjeer, and the rest is history.Arnab knew well how to stand apart from the rest of the other journalists and created a brand image that remained on people’s minds and never grew out of relevance.Despite him bullying his panelists on-air, we have always witnessed top names gracing his show and that too repeatedly.It is the number one slot of his channel that compelled the who’s who to be on his panel, despite of being denied the right to speak their mind and at times, face humiliation too. His style has attracted so much business benefit to Times Now, that even after his exit, the channel bears the ‘Arnab aura’ minus his physical presence. Arnab Goswami should ideally be a case study in professional research in the space of PR. He is a classic example of a journalist who used negative publicity in his favour to break the cliché that only good publicity helps run a business.It is worth an effort to think how he first managed to occupy the top slot with the launch of his former channel and continued to sustain that spot for years. Now, the success of Republic TV only proves that Arnab is a master strategist besides being India’s top journalist, who the industry may hate but cannot ignore.(The writer is a former TV journalist and a full-time communications professional. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)Also Read: Lessons From Arnab on Staying in the News When Not Doing the News

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How Arnab Used Negative PR to His Advantage to Stay On Top

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