In early February, the Malayalam news channel MediaOne News went off air after the ministry of home affairs refused security clearance for renewal of the channel’s licence. A statement by the organisation is reproduced below:
MediaOne News, a Kerala-based news and current affairs TV channel, suddenly and arbitrarily had its Uplinking & Downlinking license revoked by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting citing unspecified ‘national security’ concerns raised by the Ministry of Home Affairs. MediaOne News was originally granted a license for ten years on 30.09.2011 and has been operating as a Malayalam language news channel for the last nine years. Its application for a renewal of its license was rejected by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting because of the denial of security clearance by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on 31st January 2022 without specifying any concrete reasons and it has subsequently been off-air.
MediaOne News is a very popular one in the state and has won many awards and accolades including that of the State Government. It has got a TV viewership of 15.4 million inside India and 3.2 million outside India. In digital platforms the viewership is even bigger like 1.8 billion inside India and 103.08 million outside India.
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