With issues like fuel price hike, Women’s Safety, revelation on the child locks enabled in cab services and Pahlaj Nihlani controversy on Jab Harry Met Sejal, Mirror Now, India’s first consumer news channel from Times Network, has gained populairy among masses with its Facebook views running in lakhs and Twitter Impressions running in thousands.
With this activity, Times Network is revealing its true intention with their new channel as Mirror Now strengthens its leadership position. Going viral for all the right reasons, the channel was an immediate favorite of the audience from the first week of its launch. With groundbreaking stories such as the revelation on the child locks enabled in cab services garnered as many as 5lac views on facebook and 69,000 plus impressions on Twitter.
During Week 26 Mirror Now, India’s first consumer news channel from Times Network, has gone ahead of Republic TV in the Mumbai market as per the BARC Data.
Faye D’souza – The Executive Editor of Mirror Now was one of the driving force behing the channel since its launch and she spoke exclusively to tvnews4u.com on the recent developments and her plans for the channel:
Edited Excerpts:
Where do you place Mirror Now, a News Channel or an Issue based Channel ?
We are a English language General News Channel full-fledged 24×7 nationally distributed channel. I don’t know how anybody else describes a News Channel we believe that’s what we are, we are a News Channel.
We are what a an English General News channel should be in every sense, what we do we pick our stories differently every day, as Editor with my team pick different stories which other channels don’t pick. We pick these stories because I believe they are more important than what stories the other channels do. This is the only difference and it is an editorial choice. We pick stories which we believe are more important, you may think it is Issue based but we as Mirror Now feel that these issues are more important. When you wake up in the morning and come to work all of those things which influence our life is more important than the larger rhetoric of whether or not we are nationalistic. There are some questions that have to be asked should be asked, we will ask them, take up the issues, we will deal with whats going wrong, we will find solutions and that’s what a News Channel should do.
Whatever way anybody else describe themselves, but this is what we are an English General News Channel.
NDTV Metro, NDTV Chennai which didn’t work, will Mirror Now sustain Financially?
Its already meeting all of its financial targets, in fact meeting it before the deadline. But we are not a Metro this or a Metro that, Issues that we pick up are national as it affects Indians across the country. For example we talked about women are not safe in taxis and it is across India not State or Metro specific. Drugs available in school which is the biggest concern our Country is facing now that should be the issue, that should be the problem we all should be worried about. I don’t see ourselves as a Metro channel we on a regular basis everyday pick stories which affects many Indians across all cities. We pay attention to different kinds of stories, brief to the team is whatever comes into our life, whatever affects us every day, whatever threatens our life, family, children those are the stories we look at, so we are differentiated in that way. In terms of Financial 100% it will be a success.
We are a small young team and run the system differently, we are not huge and we share the Network resources. We work with our heart and I am extremely bullish that we will recover and some and extremely bullish that we meet our targets and viewership we are expecting and the advertising targets.
Its going to be 3 months from the Business point of view how well the advertiser taken to Mirror Now?
We didn’t come in with a huge bang, we didn’t spend huge sums on marketing. We are a very frugal channel and we choose our spends carefully, we were treated as a Start- up given a budget and told to start. Now thru the buzz that has been created now people know that this channel exists, conversations have begun, we have sponsorship on the channel already and without having done any big bang marketing that is a positive note. Our Sales team is getting very positive feedback from brands.
End of the day we are a channel working towards improving lifes and that resonates with a lot of brands. The fact we are working with citizens, we have a lot of goodwill going with our viewers and that I think will work in terms of bringing brands to the channel.
There is a buzz in the market that you are using a Social amplification agency to create a trend in the Social Media space?
Actually not, as we have no extra monies to pay to any one to push trends. Times has a social Media team and we avail their services. Mirror Now has one person who is 20 something who handles Social Media. There are some videos that went viral was because of the issues. The child lock in cabs and the maulana Story.
My brief to my Marketing team is please do not push stories, as at times can work against the channel. We will always be honest and not pretend to be what we are not.
Our viewership on TV and on social media has grown very organically.
How has the journey from ET Now to Mirror Now been?
I am loving it, I am still the Personal Finance Editor at ET Now and still do the show.
For me personally it’s a very interesting position to be in because there tends to be a wall between Business News Channels and General English Channel on how they understand news.
As I come from the Business side of news I understand Aadhar linkage, IT issues etc which actually affects all of us one way or the other. When GST happened and putting it in a perspective for the Indian citizens we understand it better than the other General English channels because we have the experience it is relevant to all of us so we are able to bring in the experience and bring you stories which are relegated to the Business news Channels. As bank charges etc is very relevant to all citizens.
Mirror Now is a channel which believes in bringing all relevant news which affect the citiens of the country as a whole.
