''Aaj Tak'' () is an Indian

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

-language news channel owned by

TV Today Network The TV Today Network is an English-Hindi Indian news television network based in India. It is listed on the BSE and the NSE and consists of the several news channels namely, Aaj Tak (Hindi), India Today Television (English), Good News Today (H ...

, part of the New Delhi-based media conglomerate Living Media group (India Today Group)

Aaj Tak HD

On 14 December 2018, Aaj Tak launched India's first Hindi high-definition channel, Aaj Tak HD. Aaj Tak HD broadcasts News & 2 extra Shows like ''Duniya Aaj Tak'' aired from 2019 () covering world news, ''Business Aaj Tak'' aired from 2019 () covering the financial news of India & Worldwide. Aaj Tak HD also broadcast ''Movie Masala'' aired between 2019 & 2020 () covering the news of Bollywood.

History

Aaj Tak was first broadcast on

DD Metro DD Metro also known as DD 2 was an Indian free-to-air television channel. It was launched in 1984 as DD2 in Delhi as an alternative to DD National. Later, it increased its coverage area by expanding to Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. In 1993, the ...

of Doordarshan (DD) in the year 1995. This was then broadcast as a news program of 10 to 20 minutes. Aaj Tak came into existence in December 2000 as an independent news channel and then it became the first complete Hindi news channel in the country to be broadcast twenty four hours. One of the anchors at the time was Surendra Pratap Singh. The tagline for Aaj Tak was "" (). Aaj Tak was the first news channel in India to use OB vans. By the time the channel came into existence, it had a reach of 52 lakh households and since then it has become the channel to broadcast in 3 crore households and its viewership in news channels is 56%. On 14 December 2018, Aaj Tak launched India's first Hindi high-definition channel, Aaj Tak HD. A channel rebranding took place in January 2021.

Staff

Executive staff

Aroon Purie Aroon Purie (born 1944) is the founder-publisher and editor-in-chief of ''India Today'', and former chief executive of the India Today Group. He is the managing director of Thomson Press (India) Limited and the chairman and managing director of ...

, chairman,

India Today Group 01 or '01 may refer to: * The year 2001, or any year ending with 01 * The month of January * 1 (number) Music * 01'' (Richard Müller album), 2001 * ''01'' (Son of Dave album), 2000 * ''01'' (Urban Zakapa album), 2011 * ''O1'' (Hiroyuki Sawano ...

Anjana Om Kashyap Anjana Om Kashyap is an Indian news anchor working with Hindi news channel Aaj Tak as a Senior Executive Editor. Kashyap started her journalistic career by joining the public broadcaster Doordarshan before moving to Zee News. She then went to ...

- Executive Editor *

Sweta Singh Sweta Singh is an Indian journalist and news presenter. She is a news anchor and Senior Executive Editor of Special Programming at Aaj Tak. Career Singh started her career while still in first year of graduate studies in Patna University. She ...

- Executive Editor * Sudhir Chaudhary - Consulting Editor

Past staff

Past anchors have included

Rohit Sardana Rohit Sardana (22 September 1979 30 April 2021) was an Indian anchor, journalist, and editor. He had hosted ''Taal Thok Ke'', a debate programme of Zee News before leaving for Aaj Tak in 2017, where he anchored the prime time show ''Dangal''. ...

and Surendra Pratap Singh.

Uday Shankar Uday Shankar (8 December 1900 – 26 September 1977) was an Indian dancer and choreographer, best known for creating a fusion style of dance, adapting European theatrical techniques to Indian classical dance, imbued with elements of Indian cl ...

has worked as a news director during the initial years of ''Aaj Tak''. *

Prabhu Chawla Prabhu Chawla (born 2 October 1946) is an Indian journalist. He was born in Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab, British India. He is alumni of Deshbandhu college University of Delhi. He started his career as an economics lecturer in Delhi University. He ...

Abhinandan Sekhri Abhinandan Sekhri (born 4 August 1974) is the co-founder and CEO of ''Newslaundry'', a media critique, news and current affairs website. Education Sekhri was educated at The Doon School in Dehradun, India, and then obtained a bachelor's degree ...

Punya Prasun Bajpai Punya Prasun Bajpai (born 18 March 1965) is an Indian journalist. He has worked at several news networks in his career, including Aaj Tak, where he hosted the weekday show known as 10 तक, and ABP News, where he hosted ''Masterstroke'' for f ...

Boria Majumdar Boria Majumdar is an Indian sports journalist, sports historian and writer. He was the co-writer of Sachin Tendulkar's autobiography '' Playing it My Way''. He is currently banned for 2 years by the Board of Control for Cricket in India for thr ...

Ashutosh Rana Ashutosh Ramnarayan Neekhra (born 10 November 1967), known professionally as Ashutosh Rana, is an Indian actor, producer, author and television personality. He has worked in Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Hindi films. He has also worked ...

Reception

The channel has been penalized for propagation of fake news and condemned for being partial and supporting the ideology of the ruling government. In October 2020, Aaj Tak was fined ₹1 lakh and asked to broadcast apologies for fake news regarding

Sushant Singh Rajput Sushant Singh Rajput (21 January 1986 – 14 June 2020) was an Indian actor known for his work in Bollywood, Hindi cinema. He starred in a number of commercially successful Hindi films such as ''M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story'' (2016), ''Kedarn ...

. The channel published fabricated last tweets by the actor on the channel, claiming that they were made by him a few days before his death and then deleted. Aaj Tak later removed its article with this fake news published in it. Aaj Tak was fined ₹5 lakh by BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) for viewership manipulation in a

TRP scam The TRP manipulation scam of 2020 involved the alleged inflation by some television channels of their viewership ratings. The investigation was based on a complaint filed with the Mumbai Police. The 70% revenue for television channels coming fro ...

. Between 4 and 5 April 2020, Aaj Tak had broadcast reports about

Tablighi Jamaat Tablighi Jamaat (, also translated as "propagation party" or "preaching party") is a transnational Deobandi Islamic missionary movement that focuses on exhorting Muslims to be more religiously observant and encouraging fellow members t ...

. A complaint was filed with the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) in which Aaj Tak was accused of intending to "develop hatred in the minds of the people against a particular community" during the

COVID-19 pandemic in India The COVID-19 pandemic in India is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). As of , according to Indian government figures, India has the second-highest n ...

. On 16 June 2021, the NBSA directed that Aaj Tak's broadcasts be taken down from all Internet platforms that linked a COVID-19 outbreak with Tablighi Jamaat in 2020, citing potential "errors in the figures telecast". The NBSA said that the media has "complete freedom to report on the Covid pandemic", but "such reporting must be done with accuracy, impartiality and neutrality", and added "NBSA noted that the broadcaster had admitted that there may have been chances that there were some miscalculations as pointed out by the complaint, which were inadvertent, and the broadcaster had no intention to communalize the issue or malign any community." In June 2022, the National Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority said that Aaj Tak's taglines on

Umar Khalid Umar Khalid (born Syed Umar Khalid) is an Indian student activist, former research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, former leader of Democratic Students' Union (DSU) in JNU. He was allegedly involved in the Jawaharlal Nehru University ...

‘gave an impression that the accused had already been declared guilty’ and asked the news channel to take down those shows.

Accolades

According to an old 2006 poll jointly conducted by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...