News Channels

The New Age Circus!

Circus – as we know it traditionally as a form of entertainment, may be on the decline. But a new age Circus has taken centre stage now and is threatening to overtake all forms of entertainment on offer. And that’s the TV News media circus.  Ever since the explosion of satellite and cable TV in India, there has been an explosion of TV channels in India in general and the News variety, in particular. A Wiki entry says that there are 400+ TV channels just for News in India presently, all clamouring for a share of the viewership pie.

With that kind of competition, survival needed a re-engineering of the News broadcast model. And that’s when most of the channels modelled their News programming to present wholesome entertainment. Today, if there are different options in channels like GEC (General Entertainment Category), Sports, Children entertainment, Religion & Spirituality and so on, for the grown up man, (I am not being sexist here. Just that I believe more than women, men tend to relish the entertainment on offer on News channels) News channels are a new category of entertainment that can be called as NEC (News Entertainment Category).

For the past several weeks now, this category has been buzzing with activity after the unfortunate death of Sushant Singh Rajput. Much has been written about how the goal posts in this case have shifted from suicide to abetment of suicide to murder to financial fraud to nepotism to drug consumption with the latest being Bollywood’s connection with the drug mafia. This unravelling of the story has been partly driven by a vigilante TV media which is conducting its own trial every night during prime time. It’s unfortunate that the TV media and not the investigating agencies has been in the forefront of setting the agenda of this case and every turn has been a result of some expose or other by the TV media.

As a result, what we see today is a competition among channels through orchestrated leaks and PR stunts to set the agenda for investigation.  Today, the Rajput case which was just pursued by one channel or media house in the beginning has now become an obsession for most channels/media houses. The result is a full blown war among channels, media houses and its star anchors and them taking sides depending upon what suits them and their TRPs. So, when Rhea Chakraborty gives interviews to a few channels, the other channels label it as a PR stunt to extricate herself from the case. And when Kangana Ranaut talks to few channels on nepotism, other channels label it as a distraction exercise and so on.

There are those who are integral part of the media but not part of the Rajput saga who have been critical of the tamasha going on in News channels. And they have also blamed the viewers of their choices which as per them is responsible for the degeneration of TV News channels. As per me, they only reflect the “these grapes are sour” sentiment. If they had got an opportunity to be part of the saga, the commentary would have been different.

There is no doubt that the Rajput case has heightened interest on TV news for many in India, going by the BARC statistics before and during the Rajput saga. A channel like Republic Bharat has managed to become Number 1 in Hindi News category dislodging Aajtak just during the Rajput saga! I do not watch Republic TV these days. But many do. And that’s why it is the leader in English News category by far. As kids, we liked watching a Circus. And as adults, many enjoy watching TV News which is increasingly resembling a Circus.

In this News age Circus, the reporters are like the poor animals which are paraded to perform certain items in front of the crowd. Today, the reporters are pushed by their bosses to get sound bites and capture sensational visuals which are put on a loop on TV.  Some of the guests in debates are akin to Jokers or buffoons in a Circus who are there to provide comedy relief.  At times from across the border. They are routinely insulted and howled upon. The spokespersons of the parties are according to me like the trapeze artists in a Circus.  They do the fine balancing act irrespective of the situation, swinging from one position to another as per the need and continue to “hang in there” during the heated debates.  The anchor is the ring master who is often seeing cracking the whip.

What I am trying to say is, as viewers we have long before concluded that News is another form of entertainment and is consumed as such. So, if a particular channel or show is high on ratings, it is because it is considered more entertaining than others. This doesn’t mean that we like that style of journalism. For consuming actual News or for high quality journalistic insights we have our own other sources in the media.

TV channels are sustained by TRPs – Tamasha Rating Points, I mean. And in every genre, the clamour for TRPs has brought in a big shift in programming content. In General Entertainment, from sober family value serials to “Saas Bahu” sagas and Big Boss shows, in Cricket from classical test/One day matches to T20s, in Children entertainment genre from pious Tom & Jerry cartoon types to High Octane adventure shows, in Music category from concerts to Reality shows filled with drama. The genre of News is not an exception. Hence the change from staid reporting of events of the day with visuals to noisy and sensational shouting and screaming matches around events.

The traditional Circus may be on the wane and struggling. But the New Age Media Circus is alive and kicking. And you get to watch that every day, 24*7 that too from the couch of your drawing room. And as a viewer do not have any other pretense about it.

Nate Silver, an American writer and editor famously said, “A lot of news is just Entertainment masquerading as News”.

How wrong he was!

All News is just Entertainment masquerading as nothing!

Cartoon credit: Satish Acharya

Eggs it is polls!

Afternoon on Sunday exactly a week ago in India, suddenly eggs went into short supply mode. Didn’t they all land up on the faces of psephologists and many pollster turned anchors in Delhi and other places??? For more than 3 months, India had been hijacked by elections in one state – Bihar. At the end of the tiring, long drawn 5 phased elections and just before the actual counting on 8th Nov (last Sunday) – almost all channels went on an overdrive with telecast of their exit poll results. The channels had used different agencies to conduct the same, extrapolate the vote share into seats and projected the results. However, in the afternoon when the actual results started coming in, it was clear that all the channels and their agencies were way off the mark. While all the channels had predicted a very close election with a wafer thin majority either in favour of the NDA or the Mahaghatbandhan (MGB from here), the actual outcome was more than a landslide win for the Nitish led MGB and a massive blow to Modi led NDA and ofcourse to the pollsters!!! Ironically the one agency (AXIS) which had got it correct didn’t get the opportunity to air their poll results. The channel’s (CNN-IBN) management thought it outrageous to telecast a poll which gave 169-183 seats to the MGB we are told!!! Amidst all this mass Exit poll debacle there was only one individual – Dr. Surjit Bhalla who stuck his neck out and gave 175 seats for the MGB just by his own forecast model (not exit polls) in his Indian Express article a few days before the counting and got it right.

This massive blow to Modi may be a 1st since his historic 2014 win, but for the pollsters this blow is not the 1st. Before the Bihar elections when Delhi went into polls this year, the same thing happened. While most polls predicted a close fight between BJP and AAP, the final result was clean sweep by the broom party. None of the exit/opinion polls captured that kind of a sweep. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections again it was only one agency – Today’s Chanakya which correctly called the outcome. Most others projected just a simple majority for the NDA.

Inspite of this way off their mark predictions what is the bet that the same agencies will not again carry out opinion polls/ exit polls the next time around?? These are competitive times for the channels and the polling agencies. As any election approaches (Central/State) these must be the first to salivate and glee at the prospects of increasing their TRPs with all the election related programming in which the opinion polls and exit polls are now an integral part. So we will continue to see the much hyped exit polls packaged as with new improved methodology, bigger and improved sampling next time over. Again.

Years ago when the idea of Opinion polls and Exit polls got imported to India from the US (I guess) it was fascinating. As mortals, there is this tendency in us to jump the gun. Those trips to palmists, astrologers and soothsayers of different hues to know our Aane wale kal explain this tendency. Similarly we feel excited to know who will be our rulers before the actual counting is done through exit polls though it is just a few days ahead. But US and other western democracies from where these concepts originated, are less complex and more homogenous as a society. So calling an election after an exit poll with a very small sample size and extrapolating the results there is a less arduous task I guess. (Even there Exit polls have gone awfully wrong) Ofcourse India is another kettle of beef (😁) altogether. We are repeatedly told that we have religion based voting, caste based voting, community based voting and what have you. But one thing which is missed in all this “______based voting” which the pollsters and analysts keep talking about is the New Indian voter’s “Brain based voting”!!!

As we saw now in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Delhi state elections and now in Bihar the difference in an election swinging one way or the other depends on the non-core party voters. Core party voters (members/supporters and sympathisers) vote for their party in any case. It is the Non-core party voters who bring in the swing in a particular party’s favour. They voted in a big way in favour of Narendra Modi in the 2014 elections and NDA got an overwhelming mandate. However in Delhi state elections the Non-core party voters who voted for BJP in the Lok Sabha elections voted for AAP and swept it to power. Similarly the non-core party voters pulled their might in favour of MGB in Bihar. So most of the non-core party voters in Bihar who wanted to see Narendra Modi as PM wanted to see Nitish as their CM. Perhaps. I didn’t get to see (or maybe I missed) this angle where the voters are getting smarter by the day in terms of their choices and do “Brain based voting”. So we get these results. Overwhelming mandate for Modi for PM. But Kejriwal for CM or Nitish for CM though they are entrenched firmly in different camps.

So the next time may be the pollsters should just identify if a respondent is a core or a non-core party voter and record to which party he/she voted instead of spending too much time if respondents are upper caste or Dalit or Maha Dalit,..,.. In which case, they will be in a better position to forecast how the actual swing is and save those eggs on their faces😜

MANJUL_060312irrToon courtesy: http://www.manjul.com

Peepli Live Returns!!!

Peepli Live Returns or it could be Peepli Live -2 or may be Lagey Raho Peepli Live!!! In Bollywood these are some ways of naming a sequel. And there are more and more sequels these days. Peepli Live is an offbeat Hindi film released few years ago in the genre of satirical comedy. It did make the cash registers ring if not shatter at the box office. That film basically dwells around the way TV News channels make buffoonery around some trivial events happening around us and make a fool of themselves and may be in the bargain we, the viewers as well. Anyone watching the news channels in the past 1 week or so would realise that channels are dishing out the sequel of that Peepli Live franchise. I am referring to the non-stop, wall to wall coverage of the Sheena Bora murder case.

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On 25th August, when news tickers started flashing of the Mumbai police arresting Indrani Mukherjea, the erstwhile CEO of INX Media, on her alleged role in murdering her “sister” Sheena Bora, it was just a blip on the 24*7 news radar. But the events in the next day and after turned that blip into a 24*7 national obsession or so it would seem. The coverage started hitting a shrill pitch when skeletons started tumbling down (literally) of the many relationships, the conspiracy (alleged as of now) and money trail. With accomplices in 3 cities (Mumbai, Kolkatta and Guwahati) more and more reporters and cameramen got busy “chasing” the various actors in the saga sometimes on the road at a signal, sometimes midair inside a plane and where have you.

I’m not surprised at all by the interest of the public or the media in this case. After all this is not an Aam Admi murder mystery. This is a case involving murder of a young girl who was all along touted as the “sister” of the female protagonist who was in reality her “daughter”. I’m not getting into the complex web of relationships which have become the butt of pokes and jokes. Indrani was an extremely successful woman having climbed the corporate elevator in her own way. Similarly her husband (current one i.e.,) Peter Mukherjea is credited to be the man behind one of the successful foreign channels (Star) in India. Together they were part of the successful elite that too in the media business and naturally part of the thriving Page 3 circuit. All till the fateful 25th August and that’s when they moved from Page 3 to Page 1. There is an increased interest when successful people fail. And more interest when successful Page 3 people fall. And even more heightened interest for the media when someone from their own fraternity fail and fall. So the frenzy in the media and the various “forward” jokes on social media (atleast 1 question from the next CAT/IAS exam/ KBC got leaked I would think 😄) in the next few days can be attributed to the overflowing sense of Schadenfreude all around.

But what was appalling was the nature of reporting, coverage and the now infamous media trial of this case. Instead of just letting the police to do the investigation and reporting on the progress made by the police, channels are till today conducting their own trial and delivering their verdicts. Thankfully and rightly so, the Mumbai police so far has been conducting themselves exceptionally well with restraint without falling for the arc lights of the media. Avoiding the trap of feeding news bytes by the hour, by the day or preside over press conferences every evening to sync with prime time “Newshours” of what has become a spectacle. It’s ironical that channels day in and day out debate with so called experts in “increasing boxes” trying to decipher the case and delivering instant judgements based on hearsay leaks from vested interests. Apart from debates you also have analysis as to whether Indrani was a psychopath or some other path😠😠

Is it wrong if the Mumbai police takes its own time to investigate the case thoroughly before filing the charge sheet? Don’t we remember what happened in the other high profile Arushi murder case?? There, within 1 week of the murder, police declared in a press conference that the Talwars were perpetrators of the crime. The media trial in that case swung between giving a clean chit to the Talwars and consigning them to be with blood in their hands depending upon leaks of the day. So it was good to see the Mumbai police commissioner committing that he won’t let Sheena Bora mystery turn into Arushi case. We will wait and see.

The other horrendous aspect was the height to which the channels were going, in the race to be exclusive and breaking first the ever changing twists and turns in the saga. Here I am not referring to twists like “Indrani Mukerjea ne sandwich khaya”😄. To see a reporter shoving his mike into Peter and persistently posing different questions as he walked out of his place and chasing him till the car sped away was comical at times and ironical most of the times. As also a clip showing a clutch of sleepish reporters and cameramen waiting in front of the police station only suddenly to be jolted and woken up when one among them spots one of the Ex-spouses of Indrani being paraded into the station for investigation. I would only say that seeing the coverage of the Sheena Murder case, irony would have committed a 1000 suicides😡😡

Come next week, there is hope. Hopefully, our ex-jawans and veterans would come to our rescue. Or may be already they have. The Govt. announcing the One Rank One Pension and the veterans’ not so favourable response to it may push the Sheena Bora case to the sidelines. Till the next grand press conference by police commissioner Rakesh Maria where hopefully he will establish the motive and bring this Peepli live – 2 to an end.

Postscript: Coming back to naming of sequels, the makers of Bahubali can afford to have just 2 parts and call them as “Bahubali-The Beginning” and “Bahubali-The Conclusion” respectively. But, in the case of Peepli Live one has to follow the Yashraj’s Dhoom model. Dhoom-2, Dhoom-3,.. where the protagonists are different but the investigating officer is same. No, that was a not a reference to one Mr. Goswami 😜😜😜

“Broken” News!!!

It’s a common belief that “The More the Merrier”. Particularly if you are a consumer. One always gets a better deal if there is choice. The fact that you can exercise your freedom of choice makes marketers to provide a better deal in terms of Quality, Quantity, Value for Money, the works. It is also said that in a crowded market place, brands try to differentiate themselves. Differentiation by way of form, quality, price, positioning in the mind or overall offering and vie for the consumer’s wallet. But in India, there seems to be one product category which defies all these economic fundamentals. Here More is actually Less!!! Even in an overcrowded market place there is hardly any product differentiation. From one brand to another, they only provide good advertisements for “Cloning”. And when the number of players increase the overall quality keeps falling. Irony dies a thousand deaths at our drawing homes every day and night. Yes, welcome to the world of 24*7 News channels in India!!!

breaking news

I belong to what I refer as the Doordarshan generation. A generation which grew up without much choice for anything but stayed contented. During our growing up times, DD was the only source of entertainment as well as visual news. So the 9’o clock prime time news bulletins were indeed bulletins which walked us through the important happenings of the day. The news readers were news readers and not “Anchors”. They were reading news and were not engaged in endless hysterical debates. At our homes, one of our favourite games at the dinner table used to be guessing who will be the newsreader that night – Among people like Minu, Geetanjali Iyer, Rini Khanna, Tejeshwar Singh, Usha Albuquerque, Sunit Tandon, Neethi Ravindran,…,… Blame it on my memory if I missed a few others.  Apart from consuming news, as youngsters we also had the opportunity to imbibe the way they modulated their voice, their English diction and the overall presentation.  Even sans the choice the prime time news bulletin served its purpose effectively of keeping us informed of current affairs in India and abroad.

Now cut to what I call as “Boredarshan” times and rapidly transcending now to “Boordarshan” times!!! Today, in the 24*7 news channel space we are spoilt for choice.  Or are we???

At any point in time, try to exercise that power of your choice. Across all channels invariably prime time news will start and end with debates where the participants across channels will be the same. I guess for the political parties, it is easy to prepare one spokesperson for a topic and make him/her parrot the same arguments across all channels. In any case as he/she moves from one channel to another, he will anyway meet the same counterpart from the opposition as well!!! Not just prime time debates. A new book is hitting the store? Between 2 days you will find the author providing “exclusive” interviews to 10 different channels! (As per English dictionary, the word “Exclusive” in its noun form means ‘an item or story published or broadcast by only one source! So how does showing up in different channels is termed exclusive has been elusive to me).  Come Friday and a new film is being released? You will see the film crew parading from one studio to another in the National Capital Region doing the same silly things in the guise of “Promoting” the film! And somebody emerges as the newsmaker of the day? You could meet her/him in all channels that day. (Except if the newsmaker is Lalit Modi 😃 He only gave interview this time to one channel that too in Montenegro! While the other channels also reached the Adriatic coast he changed his mind and refused to oblige). The questioners sound the same. The questions sound the same. There is a race among channels to get interviews from the newsmakers that very same day. And on weekends the channels dish out similar content like Retro Bollywood stuff, Tech reviews,…

Not just content. If you look at the style – Among anchors and reporters there seems to be no differentiation.  All anchors by and large keep interrupting and do not allow the participants to complete one sentence. As I had penned in my earlier post DA 24*7 (Read here) we find Devil’s Advocates in all hues 24*7 in news channels. Come weekends all the “Star” Devil’s Advocates take a break and leave their fiefdom to their juniors who undergo on the job training to what else – interrupt!!!

Even on form, differentiation seems to be zilch. The template across all channels seems be a crowded screen with too many details populated.

And oflate their own marketing and advertising also look similar. Every channel claims to be No.1 in viewership😲 Damn the devil which is in the “*”!!! And all of the channels cry hoarse against Noise, Sensationalism,… and exactly do that. Day in and Day out!

So what’s going on wrong here? One could blame it on the TRP driven advertising revenue model for the channels. So when one channel with a certain content/style/form gets high TRPs, the others follow the same. But I would blame it on the “TRP model” itself. I am not too sure if the present TRP system captures the preferences of the viewers accurately. For a diverse country like India, I do feel a more heterogeneous viewership capture system is the need of the hour. Lest in the garb of “the Nation wants to know” we will continue to hear more noise and less news – across all channels. And if you still recall  “broken Record” of yore, news will continue to be that – “Broken” News as you switch from one channel to another😞😞

Postscript: Recently I was forwarded this clip on WA. Wonder if we will ever get to see such an interviewer who doesn’t interrupt and an interviewee who doesn’t get flustered and stays calm throughout, in these times in India. Check it out.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MATAqeiL-4)

DATV 24*7 !!!

Devil’s Advocate is a program in one of the English News channels where, as the name typifies the anchor grills the guest and plays the role of a Devil’s advocate.  I’m told that the role of the original “Devil’s Advocate” ceased to exist since 1983 when the Pope reformed the process of “Canonization” adopted by the Church. However in our lives we are not so lucky. We live today in a spell of the Devil’s Advocate 24*7 in different avatars in the form of our great news anchors.  Hence am tempted to cluster the news channels as “DATV 24*7” (Devil’s Advocate TV)!!!

In last count, India had may be more than 140 news channels in which the Hindi ones are about 35 and the Queen’s language ones are about 20 and the rest are of the regional languages. And my no brainer guess is that certainly India must be the topper in the world in terms of number of news channels! It looks like launching a news channel has far less entry barriers in comparison to starting up a business in India considering the proliferation.

From the time of the ‘Geetanjali Iyers’, ‘Minus’, Sunit Tandons of the Doordarshan days we have indeed come a long way. From fixed dose of 30 mins. news to 24*7 news diarrhea.  From ‘news readers’ to more fashionable ‘news anchors’. From pleasing personalities who doubled up as news readers to larger than life personalities.   Today the brief for the news anchor is very clear.   My guess is that during their job induction the baptism by fire (sorry, the overdose of Biblical references in this post is purely incidental) may well go like this:

  • While anchoring a news edition, you are God and you must become the Devil’s advocate when dealing with your guests which by definition means – become someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, for the sake of argument. In taking such position, the individual taking on the Devil’s advocate role seeks to engage others in an argumentative discussion process ( Courtesy – Wikipedia )
  • Never allow the guest to complete what he / she wants to say.  Interrupting is your birthright. 
  • Viewers watch the news edition because of you and not because of the guests. So you HAVE to win every argument with your guests.
  • Since while hiring we have checked out that you have been a talented debater in your school/college times, you must bring those skills to the fore here.
  • Whatever may be the issue of discussion – if the guest is from BJP – you should ask them about Gujarat and to the guest from Congress – about the fallacies of dynastic politics. ( remember the previous mandate – this will help you win every argument )
  • If you are anchoring the English news edition, make sure your Hindi is bad.  If your Hindi is as good then you have no place in the English news room. To a Hindi heartland politician guest your question should be like: “Aap ko lagta nahin hai, yeh conjecture hai???” or “Aap kyun maante hain yeh reform public ko beneficial nahi hoga???”
  • Being calm, cool and grounded cannot be a layer of your personality. Need to be hysterical most of the time. ( You are dealing with politicians who are masters in creating mass hysteria)
  • You are the news anchor. So you don’t have to be consistent in what you say and what you mean.  So if India wins the world cup – India is the uncrowned king of ODIs and the question that day should be – “When will India be the No. 1 test ranked team?” After all Test cricket is the real thing.  And the day India becomes the No.1 test team the question should be – “In the absence of Test World cup, is the ranking system credible…”  In short your questioning must be as they say in Tamil – “Kundaka – Mandaka” ( Sorry I couldn’t get the right English word for this one!)
  • And finally, when you interview film stars/ Bollywood tribe as part of their film promotions, you have to be a God’s advocate and be as sheepish as possible.

Like any other field, news business (yes it is) has become a competitive business and is determined by “The Racket Points” (known more popularly as TRPs).  And in India with that multitude of channels it is one hell of a competitive business. Hence it is not surprising that news channels have modeled themselves after “Bollywood” which by and large has held its own for decades now and has managed to weather many a technological storms which have come by its way.  And as put aptly in one dirty picture – it’s all about Entertainment, Entertainment and Entertainment!!!

  • So if one watches a news edition, the 1st few minutes (2 to be precise) are spent on reeling out the main headlines of the day and that’s it. The rest of the hour is spent on debates mostly pointless.  And that successful formula of Bollywood is essentially telling a story with drama, weave emotions around it and keeping it as entertaining as possible by throwing in a few song & dance sequences, action sequences,.. Copy that into a news edition today – the anchor brings in the drama with his/her style, the debates conjure up the emotion and hysteria and the film stars in the garb of promoting their movies add to the entertainment quotient if the debates didn’t measure up.
  • And anything which casually happens is actually “Breaking News” (For example, recently when the TV channels were ‘breaking the news” of Bal Thackeray’s last procession during the whole Sunday – Raj Thackeray “suddenly deciding to stop walking and getting into his car and speeding away” was “Breaking News”!!! I’m sure the Breaking News tamasha inspires a 1000 “Peepli lives” day in and day out.
  • It’s not surprising that when Hillary Clinton is on a visit to India, we could see her “Exclusive” interviews in almost all English news channels!!!
  • And in this method of madness there is no exception.  If you flip through the English news channels today in a sequence – it will be like watching a motion picture in sequence. Only the anchor will be different. The topic of discussion will be the same. The guests who come to debate will be the same. (You guessed it right – Ravi Shankar Prasad from BJP, Abhishek Singhvi from Congress ,..,..) The style of discussion will be the same and the end result will be predictable.
  • The fact that most of the Indian News anchors cut their teeth in one “New Delhi TV” school has not helped.
  • Political parties don’t want to debate issues in Parliament because it makes for boring visuals. Debating in TV studios make for better entertainment you see!!!

In their off anchoring times, most anchors admit to donning the tough cop role basically to put the politicians on a mat by asking all the tough questions on issues of the day so that the viewers can then make their own judgement. But they end up being a Devil’s advocate – and that too poor ones at that because in the original instance when a Devil’s Advocate was deployed the verdict was out (“Canonized” or not) but here the temerity of the politicians just continues and the show just goes on!!!