ABSTRACT

     Purpose: The  rebranding  of  Headlines  Today,  the  English  news  channel  from TV Today Network Ltd, to India Today, its 40-year-old flagship English news magazine was to keep pace and move to a world of seamless news on digital devices by adopting non-linear philosophy. The re- launch has given a new dimension of storytelling from shifting linear to being non linear as on the web. India Today can claim to be a new channel with fresh content. This rebranding has improved the credibility by aligning its idea of an integrated newsroom. This paper is focused to probe into (a) the viability of rebranding of Headlines Today in India Today (b) the role of established print brand of India Today in boosting the brand equity of digital India Today through rebranding (c) the viability of adopting non-linear news telling strategy to draw viewers.

Design / Methodology/ Approach:  The study being exploratory in nature relies on secondary data collected from print and digital resources. One of the major tools that is applied in study of impact of television channel is Television Rating Point (TRP). The word TRP has now been reworded as TVT (Television Viewership in Thousands) and GRP (Gross Rating Point) is now GVT (Gross Viewership in Thousands). TRP is a tool provided to judge which programmes are viewed the most. This gives an index of the choice of the people and also the popularity of a particular channel.

Findings: TV journalism is linear. It has gone beyond that and brought India Today ethos of journalism on to television. India Today is a very big brand, and it exists across mediums. For people who are consuming news, dividing brand or mediums does not work. It is prudent to give brand that he trusts across platforms. With the new look, the channel has also narrow casted various segments of age groups. The group banded everything in Hindi under the name of Aaj Tak and everything in English under India Today. And that strategy has worked really well.

Limitations:  Sources suggest that a huge number of channels in India use two spots on the cable network (dual frequency) and India Today TV were using dual frequency on multiple networks. However, this increased the chances of sampling and necessitates for re-sampling and retesting empirically on the basis of primary data.

Practical implications: Rebranding is not all about changing the logo but there is a broader idea upon which rebranding is pivoted on. It is an expensive process. If rebranding is done just for a tinkering of the logo, without actually reflecting what the audience wants to see, it will not work in the long run. Digitization has given viewers more choice to select what they want to pay for and watch. And with more progress on the digitization front, the future will see more and more TV channels rebranding.

Originality/Value:  The paper assesses viewership of the English news genre which is so fragile that even minor changes look significant. Based on inputs from Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) and TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd the trend has been tracked. It was also revealed that the effort of rebranding was paying off.

Key words: Non-linear news, Branding, Rebranding