Two of India’s English-language news majors are slugging it out in a battle for the small but influential English-language news market. Their most powerful current weapon is dual frequencies on pay-TV platforms. But the cost is high, and there’s some doubt over how long they can keep it up.

It flattered only to deceive. India Today TV became the number one English-language news channel in India for a week in June this year. Market leader, Times Now, however, took back its position the very next week.

The advertising battle between the two – with insults being traded across hoardings, video ads and e-mailers – has occupied India’s trade press for weeks. Perhaps more interesting is the way the brands used distribution to increase reach across India’s 161 million TV homes.

Times Now has remained the most watched English-language news channel for seven years. It brings in more than 40% of the top line for the estimated US$72-million Times Global Broadcasting, which is part of the US$1.2 billion Times Group, one of India’s largest media firms

India Today TV is part of the US$76-million (March 2015) TV Today Network that, in turn, is housed within the US$143 million (March 2013) India Today Group. Besides the eponymous magazine, it also publishes the Indian titles of Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, among others. Its TV arm, however, has had only one big success so far – Aaj Tak, a Hindi news channel that has long been the market leader. Headlines Today, its English news channel, has struggled for relevance in a market bursting with competition.

On May 23 this year, Headlines Today was rebranded as India Today TV and within a couple of weeks hit the top spot. The secret sauce was a dual frequency strategy that meant the channel was in two places instead of one on a single cable network. This increased reach and therefore sampling.

According to Chrome Data Analytics and Media data in the week it became number one, India Today TV was on a dual frequency on 70 cable networks – the highest by any of India’s 800-odd channels. This gave it additional reach of 22% across India’s 161 million TV homes.

Times Now reacted with the same moves. Last week, when it jumped back, it was dual on 53 networks or about 20.1% of TV homes (against 29 networks when it slipped).

Both firms deny that distribution is the big tactic. “Our distribution increase has been going on for the last 15 months as we work to bring our product to more viewers,” says M.K. Anand, Times Global Broadcasting’s chief executive.

“This (dual frequency) is a strategy used in partial fulfilment of the launch campaign,” says Ashish Bagga, India Today Group’s chief executive.

Whatever it is, being dual on such a scale can’t last for more than another two or three weeks, analysts reckon. The strategy carries a 50% premium on the annual US$2.8-US$3.3 million that news channels pay cable operators as carriage fees.

On the face of it, blowing up so much money on English-language news, which is less than half a per cent of the total time spent on the genre, makes no sense.

However, in India, English-language news attracts a premium from advertisers across media – print, TV, radio or online. English-language news broadcasters get a disproportionately high US$112 million of the US$476 million that advertisers spent on Indian news channels. “The correlation between revenues and rating is the highest in English news,” says Chrome founder, Pankaj Krishna.

Against this backdrop, it’s little wonder that two of India’s most powerful media firms are fighting so fiercely. – Vanita Kohli-Khandekar