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Mint and Bloomberg UTV bury old hatchets; forge strategic content alliance
The tie-up will see the media companies sharing content on a daily basis and undertaking various joint editorial initiatives through the year.
Mint and Bloomberg UTV have entered into a strategic tie-up according to which the media companies will share content on a daily basis and undertake various joint editorial initiatives through the year.
As per the alliance, Bloomberg UTV will feature news and analysis from Mint, and in turn, Mint will carry relevant news stories from Bloomberg UTV every day. Mint will also produce news and lifestyle weekly television shows exclusively for the channel. Through this initiative, the business daily from the stable of HT Media (Mint) and the English business news channel (Bloomberg UTV) aim to reach out to a newer set of audiences.
Bloomberg UTV's campaign, 'Blunt. And Sharp', aimed to highlight the category and consumer truths within the existing business news environment and had a striking resemblance to Mint's advertisement during the business daily's Kolkata and Chennai launches last year. The ads by both companies had a mix of English and Greek language, portraying the complicated way in which business news is often delivered.
HT Media had served a legal notice to the business channel prior to approaching the High Court of Kolkata, but the channel had denied any charges of infringement of IPR and the injunction was lifted later.
Interestingly, speaking on the present tie-up, Deepak Lamba, business head, Bloomberg UTV, says, "The business news consumer has been presented news with an intimidating complexity for years. The brand essence of both Mint and Bloomberg UTV has been based on cutting these confusion multipliers and getting straight to the information - clear and usable. With the might of two thought-leading products (Mint - Refreshing Clarity in Business, and Bloomberg UTV - Blunt. And Sharp) coming together on this agenda, we believe the progress towards uncluttered business news will be tangibly accelerated."
In an official communiqué, R Sukumar, editor, Mint, says, "Our partnership with Bloomberg UTV will further enhance our offering and give us an additional platform to showcase our content."
This is not the first time that Mint has entered into a content sharing tie-up with a television channel. In 2009, the business daily had a content sharing tie-up with CNBC-TV18, which worked on a daily basis. As per the alliance, Mint featured the top stories, analyses and interactions from CNBC-TV18 on a page called 'Exclusive from CNBC-TV18', and important stories and reports from Mint were featured on CNBC-TV18 during the prime time news bulletins. While Mint carried the byline of the CNBC-TV18 journalist, the CNBC-TV18 anchors mentioned the name of the Mint journalists, and carried the Mint logo in the news bulletins.
The new partnership will have no bearing on Mint's existing association with The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg UTV's partnership with Bloomberg.