By Ranjona Banerji
Do you know anyone who lives in a big city, under the age of 30, who watches TV news for three hours of an evening or reads a newspaper for an hour every morning? I don’t. I know that these young persons get news from their phones, they livestream sports and entertainment at their convenience. They are not bound by the logistics of traditional media. They have been freed by the digital experience.
But what does that mean for journalism and mainstream media? As far as “content†goes, news reports and opinions can shift almost seamlessly from print to online. But how does TV transfer? Will a generation fed by Google and occasionally Facebook suddenly sit still in front of a television set for hours, watching people scream at each other once they turn 40?
Or will some new innovation have come along by then which will produce even more changes in people’s reading and viewing habits?
Either way, this is a bit of a seismic shift happening. The assumption so far within the media was that TV was unassailable and it was the print media and paper which was in trouble. But paper itself never should have been the issue. Paper is just trees that will now live. Online news is not so different from paper news in the way it is put together. But television faces a completely new and tough challenge. It has to realign itself with changing habits and changing demands. If I have Amazon Prime and Netflix, why do I need a cable connection or a DTH set-top box any more? And where then will I watch television news?
In simple personal terms, I can explain it in terms of sport, which in fact I have done before. If my TV subscription does not allow me to watch the sport I want – tennis – I will look elsewhere. And as time passes, I will be more and more successful finding what I want online. I can watch it on any device, including my television, for a Rs 4000 dongle or a Rs 400 cable.
And that brings me back to question one: How many 20-year-olds sit down and watch screaming anchors and their gusts throwing tantrums for two hours every night?
As of now, TV news is an old man’s game in India and it is unlikely to change. There may be no immediate challenge but that doesn’t mean that the challenge is not on its way. As it had happened within the print media earlier, the warning signs were there, but no one was willing to pay attention or take them seriously. Some newspapers decided that online and paper within the same newsroom must compete. Others pretended that the online purpose was served by hiring techies. All bows, no present.
The challenge is how to make money, how to monetise content without compromising integrity, how to pay journalists, how to negotiate a deal with Google… and it’s no small challenge. The internet is free or so cheap that it does not matter – that’s how it works for readers. How many of us actually subscribe to online content? Or cough up when we reach a paywall? And how many of those who do are under the age of 30?
Right now, many of these conversations are happening at the subterranean level. But it’s time to bring them to the top and figure out together how the future of news is going to work. Otherwise, we sink underground together. Penniless. And someone else is laughing all the way to the bank.