Indian media company Television Eighteen India on Wednesday said it would close two offices in the country as part of restructuring of its news-gathering operations. TVIL was shutting down its offices in Chennai and Kolkata, chief executive Harish Chawla said by phone from Mumbai, adding, however, that the cost savings would be minimal as the company planned simultaneously to expand to new cities.
"We are only cutting away our physical infrastructure in these two cities as it helps cut fixed costs," he said. "But at the same time we will be expanding our news-gathering to cities like Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Jaipur, so it is only a new model."
He said the company, which provides content to CNBC India, plans to reemploy on contract the media professionals at these offices, and job losses will not be significant. "We have about two or three people in each of these offices, out of 250 countrywide, and we will be either transferring them or moving them to a new contractual arrangement on a retainer basis," he said.
News-gathering in the new cities will also be done by contract staff, who will operate with minimal infrastructure.
"We are operating out of five cities now, and this will go up to eight to 10 cities in the next few months as we find people to provide us content on a contract basis with a specified number of news stories every month. So actually we are expanding," he said. TVIL's shares were up 0.72 per cent at Rs 83.40 on Wednesday afternoon, while the benchmark Bombay index was down 1.15 per cent as war fears weighed on sentiment.
The share has more than doubled from the year's low of Rs 37 hit post-September 11, but is still over 70 per cent off the year's high of Rs 284. Bureau Report