When it comes to business, it doesn’t matter whether the person the other side is his bosom friend or close acquaintance.
This was the lesson learnt by two top Telugu television channels – NTV and TV9 from none other than power staf and Jana Sena Party president Pawan Kalyan.
For quite some time, these two channels have been promoting Jana Sena chief and giving extensive coverage to his programmes.
There is also a hush talk in the media circles that NTV owner Narendra Chowdary had even gifted a costly car to Pawan Kalyan.
Yet, neither of these two channels could get the telecast rights of the audio release function of Pawan Kalyan’s forthcoming film Agnyathavasi.
The rights were bagged by their rival channel TV5. This was supposed to be due to two reasons: one – TV5 offered the highest price while bidding for the telecast rights of the audio release function; secondly, the production unit Harika-Hasini has close relations with the TV5 management.
While TV9 took this development into its stride, NTV Chowdary is learnt to have got offended.
On the advice of TV9 CEO Ravi Prakash, Chowdary called up Pawan Kalyan and told him that his channel had been giving a lot of support to Jana Sena and so, it would be appropriate for him to reciprocate by giving the telecast rights to the NTV as well.
But Pawan quietly told him that he had nothing to do with the telecast rights and everything was being handled by the production management.
“In any case, films are different from Jana Sena activities. Both are different. So, I don’t want to link both the activities,” he said.
He, however, assured to see that the initial promotion activities and his exclusive interviews would be given first only to TV9 and NTV. And Chowdary and Ravi Prakash could not say anything but to agree for it.
Meanwhile, TV9 has already started taking anti-Jana Sena stand in its news features much to the disgruntlement of Pawan’s fans. In any case, Pawan’s decision has distanced two major television channels.
It remains to be seen how he bridges the gap again.