Harvest TV’s ambitions threaten to come a cropper

English news channel Harvest TV has barely been around for a week, but it already has a name issue, a logo problem, an unclear shareholding pattern, and there are rumours of partisan political affiliations

English news channel Harvest TV went live on 26 January, but the channel is already embroiled in controversy

The channel's alleged political connections have seen it come under intense scrutiny from authorities

While ghosts from its promoter's past are also out to knee-cap the fledgeling endeavour

With legal notices and government complaints flying thick and fast, what's going on with India's latest English news channel?

The weekend of 26 January saw Harvest TV—a new English news channel—go live on air in India. Its honeymoon period was short-lived. Just two days later, a few hours into the first business day after the channel’s launch, Harvest TV briefly disappeared from airwaves. It was blacked out on both the platforms it was available on—Airtel’s direct-to-home (DTH) service and cable platform Den Networks.

The channel reappeared a few minutes later, but on a different, downgraded frequency, said Deepak Choudhry, president of Veecon Media and Broadcasting, Harvest’s promoters.

AUTHOR

Harveen Ahluwalia

In her last assignment, Harveen was at Mint, the business daily published by HT Media. At Mint, where she spent about two years, she wrote stories on retail, food and the media business. Harveen is a B.Com (H) graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. She has a diploma in journalism from the Times School of Journalism. Like many folks at The Ken, Harveen talks and tweets a lot. When she isn’t writing or reading, she likes to sketch and doodle. She can be reached at harveen at the-ken dot com.

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