Running a news channel is not an easy thing for it not only requires huge reserves of funds but also requires tremendous strength to withstand the political pressures. Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, news channels do not earn even a quarter of the revenues earned by entertainment channels. That’s the reason, most of the news channels of Telugu states struggle to survive. AP 24×7 was one such channel that almost faded out from the arena of Telugu media. However, as per latest reports, the channel is all set to make a comeback. Details as follows.
Started with a bang but failed to sustain:
AP 24×7 channel started in 2017 after the bifurcation of the state in 2014. The channel was promoted as the first channel to have all the operations from the residual state of AP. The channel did get good mileage and became successful in the initial years itself. However, later, the channel ran into several problems. Differences popped up among the directors of the channel and these differences led to severe clashes among the directors. Also, marketing failures landed the channel in huge financial mess. In addition, the channel failed to reflect the public opinion as the channel fiddled with several political parties and tried to help those parties. All this led to literal shut down of the channel. Employees of the channel have been agitating against the management since couple of years.
Channel to make a comeback now:
However, as per the latest reports, channel is all set to make a comeback. The directors struck a deal among themselves and agreed to give major stakes to Ankem Laxmi Srinivas, who is also one of the directors. Reportedly, he is also ready to takeover the channel completely. For the uninitiated, Laxmi Srinivas Ankem is a close aide of Chiranjeevi family and was active during Praja Rajyam days. He also contested in elections in 2019 from Janasena party but lost the election. Even after the elections also he has been in touch with Pawan Kalyan. This tag of being close aide of Mega family seems to be working against Ankem Laxmi Srinivas and his channel as the channel is not getting funding from others. But the employees of the channel are happy with the reports about channel being rechristened as they have full faith on Laxmi Srinivas. Also his straight forward nature is liked by the employees a lot.
We need to wait and see whether Ankem Laxmi Srinivas will be able to steer the channel into success or not.
