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Living Media to make news channel of Aaj Tak

NetScribes/Mahesh Shetty

The Living Media group is planning to spin off its daily news clip on Doordarshan, Aaj Tak, into a 24-hour news channel of its own. The channel is likely to go on air on December 15, which is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the group.

Sources say the group, which publishes India Today, is working with a kitty of around Rs 3 billion for the project. The channel is aiming at the CNN model of online news coverage and reportedly has around 200 people on board, most of them journalists and the remainder being cameramen and other technicians.

Officials at TV Today, the television production house that makes Aaj Tak, confirmed the news. S Krishnan, chief executive officer at TV Today, however, said the launch date has not been decided. "Right now, none of our plans are in place," he said. Sources say even allowing for technical hitches, the channel should be on the air by the start of 2001.

"TV Today is fairly well equipped, in terms of both infrastructure and reach, to put out something on this scale," said a source within the industry.

American television powerhouse, CNN already has plans to launch a Hindi news channel for the Asian subcontinent. Aaj Tak was earlier in talks with CNN to supply content for this. The talks later fell through for unspecified reasons.

Aaj Tak began as a regular news bulletin service on national broadcaster Doordarshan at the end of 1995. It gradually extended to other areas in Hindi content and today has two news-based programmes everyday.

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