via livemint.com
In the end, The Times Group edged out its arch rival, The UnReal Times, to tie up with leading US based news and opinion website Huffington Post in what industry insiders say was a very tight race. Management of both groups showcased their content to Ariana Huffington, who had a hard time trying to decide which group is better.
One group specializes in parodying Arnab and the other has Arnab himself parodying Arnab. And when it comes to coverage of politics, it was again a dead heat, especially with AAP leaders and Rahul Gandhi providing good copy to both groups. The UnReal Times seemed to fare slightly better than The Times group when rated for authenticity of their reports but The Times more than made up for that with a higher TQ (titillation quotient). So again, scores level.
In fact, towards the end, Ariana was thinking of tying up with The UnReal Times, until Satyan Gajwani, Times Internet CEO, played his trump card. “After that, it was a no brainer, yaa,” Ariana said. “Now there is no doubt that the Times Group is way ahead of these Unreal chaps when it comes to generating humour of the highest quality. I wish Satyan had shared this information in the initial rounds itself so that we could have come to the decision faster, you know,” the CEO of Huffington Post added.
Ariana was alluding to these set of tweets that Satyan was kind enough to forward to her which clinched the deal in favour of Times Group:
Arnab has a new ally in TNN-Sagarika
— Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) July 30, 2014
Delighted about my new assignment starting August. An honour and for me a homecoming too! :)
— Sagarika Ghose (@sagarikaghose) July 28, 2014