CNBC-Rajdeep Sardesai's Broadcast News calls for pitch

Broadcast News, the new television venture formed by Rajdeep Sardesai, Sameer Manchanda and TV 18's promoter Raghav Bahl, has called for an agency pitch.

While details of the pitch are awaited, the size of the account is known to be substantial.

Both Sardesai, formerly managing editor of NDTV, and Manchanda, ex-CFO of NDTV, are strategic partners in this new venture.

Sardesai confirmed to agencyfaqs! that the channel has called for a pitch. The third channel from the CNBC stable is going to be a “hard news, current affairs” channel, he explained. As of date, CNBC India has two other operational channels – covering business news in English and Hindi, respectively.

According to industry sources, many of the big agencies have shown interest to participate in the pitch. In the recent past, the CNBC group had seen another pitch. That was for the CNBC programme – Storyboard.

The channel had then called the 18-20 top agencies for doing a creative for the programme's approaching fourth anniversary. Everest Brand Solutions and Percept/H emerged as the joint winners at the pitch. The promos of the programme will be out very soon.

This time, though, Everest may not be participating as the Broadcast News account will be in conflict with the agency's existing client Aaj Tak. “The Storyboard was an one-off project. Therefore, we had decided to do it,” quipped a senior Everest executive.

Watch this space for more.

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