News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) has partnered with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP (Deloitte India), a large multinational professional services organisation, to launch an integrated performance and rewards forum for the news broadcasting sector.

This is the first-ever such association in the media domain, the federation said in a statement on Wednesday.

NBF is an association of news channels and claims to have the largest number of news TV channels within its fold.

The five-year partnership aims at building thought leadership in the human capital space.

Apart from a total rewards report, and compensation and benchmarking studies, NBF’s members will have the opportunity to glean insights in the areas of productivity analysis, performance management, employee assessments, employee preference, and employee engagement.

NBF members will also get access to Deloitte India Human Capital reports on Workforce and Increments Trends (WITS) and Campus Hiring Trends, amongst other industry-leading reports.

Speaking on the agreement, Arnab Goswami, Founding-President, NBF, said, “Employees, especially journalists and related executives involved in the public service of taking news and information to the doorsteps of crores of Indians, are the backbone of the sector. This much-needed study will identify the social, economic, and financial impact of the ongoing pandemic and the pause in audience measurement data for the TV news genre. The partnership will enable the news broadcasting sector to prepare news TV channels to be future-ready, in terms of skills and benchmarking of employee benefits.”

R. Jai Krishna, Secretary-General, NBF said, “Employee costs are the single biggest expense for a news TV channel. The NBF-Deloitte India association aims to make the news TV sector more sustainable and successful, by preparing it to hire the best talent for a strong news media industry.”

Anubhav Gupta, Partner, Deloitte India, said, “This is a unique association to strengthen the human capital landscape of the media industry. Deloitte India’s Human Capital team is excited to work alongside NBF to provide thought leadership in multiple pertinent issues in this sector.”

India has about 909 satellite television channels of which news television channels (being the single-largest genre) constitute 43 percent. The first phase of the survey will cover more than 300 organisations and commenced from December 2021. The results are expected by Q4 2021.