RIL denies selling news media biz to Times Group

New Delhi, November 28

Reliance Industries today denied reports of selling its news media business to Times Group. Bloomberg early on Thursday reported that Ambani “is in talks to sell his news media assets to Times Group, as Asia’s richest man plans to unload a business that’s been losing money”.

“Reliance Industries firmly denies (the) story. The story is baseless and false,” a company spokesperson said.

The report had quoted people familiar with the matter to say that Bennett Coleman & Co, the publisher of the Times of India, is looking to hire advisers for due diligence on the news properties of Ambani’s Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.

Bennett Coleman’s spokesperson couldn’t be immediately reached for comments.

Reliance had in 2014 bought Network18, which owns and operates 56 local channels spanning news and entertainment, for up to Rs 4,000 crore.

Network18 owns TV channels (including CNBCTV18, CNN-IBN, CNN Awaz), websites (firstpost.com, moneycontrol.com), magazines (including the licence for Forbes India), entertainment channel (Colors and MTV) among other businesses.

Unlisted Bennett Coleman, also known as the Times Group, has two news channels — Times Now (for general news) and ET Now (the business news channel) which compete with Network18’s general news channel News18 and business news channel CNBCTV18. — PTI