ABP News is an Indian

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

-language

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscri ...

television news channel owned by ABP Group. Initially launched as Star News in 1998, it was later acquired by the ABP Group (ABP). It won the Best Hindi News Channel award in the 21st edition of the Indian Television Academy Awards in 2022. The channel has been accused by protestors of being partial and supporting the ideology of the ruling

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; , ) is a political party in India and one of the two major List of political parties in India, Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. BJP emerged out from Syama Prasad Mukherjee's ...

government and has been otherwise criticized as being a part of " Godi media" pro-

Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Par ...

news outlets in India.

History

ABP News was launched as STAR News on 18 February 1998 by satellite television provider

Star India Disney Star (also known as JioStar), registered as JioStar India Private Limited, is an Indian media conglomerate joint venture owned with a share of 16.34% by Reliance Industries, 46.82% by Viacom18 and 36.84% by Disney India. On 14 Nove ...

in partnership with the NDTV media company, with the latter producing the channel's programming. Initially, a bilingual channel broadcasting in both English and

, its programming turned Hindi-only since 2003, when Star's deal with NDTV expired. In that same year, the Indian government introduced a guideline limiting foreign equity in the national news business to 26%. As Star India was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong–based company Satellite Television Asia Region Ltd. (Star TV), it entered into a joint venture with the Ananda Bazar Patrika Group (ABP Group) to form a new company, Media Content and Communications Services Pvt. Ltd. (MCCS), which took control of Star News's operations. ABP held a 74% majority stake while Star India reduced its participation with the remaining 26%. On 16 April 2012, ABP Group and Star India announced the end of the Star brand licensing agreement. In addition, the company sold its minority stake in MCCS to ABP Group, which in turn renamed the channel to ABP News. The change was also replicated on other regional news channels operated by MCCS such as Bengali-language Star Ananda and Marathi-language Star Majha, which were renamed as ABP Ananda and ABP Majha, respectively. A Punjabi-language channel, ABP Sanjha was granted licence approval in 2014 and launched in that year. A Gujarati-language channel, ABP Asmita, was launched on 1 January 2016. In November 2016, Avinash Pandey became a chief operating officer (COO) of ABP News. All of ABP's channels, including ABP News, were gradually revamped throughout the second half of 2020, beginning with the renaming of parent-subsidiary ABP News Network to ABP Network in July 2020. A further rebranding, which affected the channels themselves, took place in the morning of 16 December 2020, with the launch of simpler, more modern logos and a new graphics package developed by Saffron Brand Consultants for all of ABP's channels. Additionally, ABP News acquired new equipment able to record content at

1080p 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the sc ...

and launched its own HD feed; the channel's SD feed turned into a downscaled, 16:9 widescreen version of the HD feed. Prior to the HD feed launch, ABP News had launched a test HD feed in February of that same year, exclusively on streaming service Disney+ Hotstar and on ABP's online platforms, which was basically an upscaled version of the SD channel airing 4:3 content stretched to fill the 16:9 screen. Although ABP Network's regional language channels were also rebranded, they remained airing at 4:3 standard definition.

Satellite interruptions during the show Masterstroke

In 2018, former host Punya Prasun Bajpai stated that when he criticized the performance of one of prime minister

's projects directed towards poor farmers in his television show ''Masterstroke'', ABP News' satellite broadcasting was disrupted each time the program was aired. Former employees reported that the channel owners had pressured the host, Punya Prasun Bajpai, to quit the company. After his resignation, these technical issues immediately stopped. Another host, Abhisar Sharma, who challenged Modi's public safety strategies on ABP News, was fired that same day. He also said he was under pressure to leave.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Abp News Television channels based in Noida 24-hour television news channels in India Foreign television channels broadcasting in the United Kingdom Television channels and stations established in 1998 Hindi-language television channels in India ABP Group Mass media in Mumbai 1998 establishments in Uttar Pradesh Godi media 1998 establishments in Maharashtra Television stations in Mumbai NDTV Fox Networks Group Hindi-language television stations Television networks in India Indian news websites Hindi-language websites Bengali-language websites English-language websites Television controversies in India Television censorship 2018 controversies

History

Satellite interruptions during the show Masterstroke

See also

References

Further reading

External links