The Indian affiliate of Bloomberg Television is threatening to sue an anchorman at CNBC's local partner for Rs5bn ($110m) for defamation in a row showing the cut-throat nature of the world's second- largest cable TV market. In a live on-air tirade, CNBC TV18's managing editor, Udayan Mukherjee, criticised what he called "the number four player" in the industry for claiming it had topped the ratings with its coverage of the government's national budget last month, a critical day for Indian business TV.
Mr Mukherjee insisted in the telecast that CNBC had come first in the budget day ratings. Although he did not name Bloomberg UTV, the channel, which until budget day was fourth-ranked by one of the main ratings agencies, it took offence and in a letter sent last week demanded an apology and damages.
On-air spats are common in the US, but it is a new development in Indian business television and follow an explosion in competition over the past two years, as entrants seek to challenge CNBC TV18's decade-long dominance.
Covering 83m households, India's pay-TV market is dwarfed only by China in terms of viewers, according to Media Partners Asia, a research firm.
A flood of global media groups have entered the market, which aside from CNBC and Bloomberg include News Corp, Disney, NBC, Time Warner, Viacom and Sony.
Bloomberg announced its alliance with UTV, a film, television and gaming group founded by media entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, in September.
The channel has been trailing CNBC but on budget day late last month, it claimed to have topped the ratings, based on figures from a local agency, Amap.
However, Mr Mukherjee, appearing on CNBC's morning market programme this month, retorted that his team was ahead based on figures from rival agency, Television Audience Management Research.
He added in Hindi that "the number four player", should "know its place".
In the letter to Mr Mukherjee, Bloomberg UTV's lawyers accused the anchorman of defaming the channel and breaching journalistic ethics.
"You have taken a personal affront to the success of Bloomberg UTV," said the letter, seen by the Financial Times.
While the letter has not been publicly released, Bloomberg UTV has made the same legal threats in the Indian media, saying its budget day ratings came from a credible agency. Bloomberg in New York declined to comment.
Mr Mukherjee and Raghav Bahl, the controlling shareholder of CNBC TV18, did not respond to requests for comment yesterday. But domestic media reports cited Mr Mukherjee's lawyers as rejecting the Bloomberg UTV claims, saying the anchorman did not mention the channel by name in his remarks.
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