MxMIndia

Tag: Headlines Today

  • Every Thursday, Ranjona Banerji will write about a grouse. Either spewing venom or tongue-in-cheek

    [MJR] Breakfast with Bollywood and other abominations

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Suppose (warning, blasphemy follows) you’re the kind of person who doesn’t manage to read a newspaper in the morning before you leave for work so you keep the TV on to get the latest through “breakfast news”.

     

    This is what I found out today: Katy Perry sang and danced and was looking for curry and something in India, said NDTV.  IPL season 5 starts with a match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. Ravi Shastri said Chennai was going to win and Moody said Mumbai was going to win, both on Times Now. Headlines Today said that Akshay Kumar is acting in a new film directed by Prabhu Deva called Rowdy something.

     

    Given the high drama on TV the night before over the $10 million bounty on Hafiz Saeed’s head placed by the US, I foolishly thought (it’s amazing how foolish I feel when I watch TV) that there would be some more on that. Not on Times Now at any rate.

     

    NDTV had a thought-provoking report on trafficking of young girls and women from West Bengal, being led into brothels in Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. Anderson Cooper 360 was largely focused on the Republican primaries. The BBC was on Newsday, so that’s bits from here and there, with plenty on China and something on the new James Bond film (I didn’t stop long enough to watch that, had had enough of films thanks to Headlines Today).

     

    That left CNN-IBN who told me everything I wanted to know about Hafiz Saeed and Pakistan’s reaction to the US bounty.

     

    My grouse therefore is that I was wrong yesterday for castigating newspaper websites for being too full of cricket and Bollywood and giving TV a clean chit. Or is my grouse that websites are deceptive? Something like that.

     

  • The senior editor (news) at Times Now who recently resigned has set up Studio Talk which aims to prepare young journalists in all areas of TV journalism.

    Mahrukh Inayet quits Times Now, starts school for anchors

    By Archita Wagle

     

    If you thought anchoring was just about sitting in front of the camera and talking, Studio Talk, a finishing school for those looking to make their career before the cameras, will prove differently to you. “A lot of youngsters believe that anchoring is not serious journalism and I want to break that myth. It’s time one understands that anchoring is impossible without knowledge,” said Mahrukh Inayet Rizvi, Course Director, Studio Talk, who recently resigned as senior editor (news) at Times Now.

     

    Ms Inayet was part of the core team at Headlines Today, that helped set up the channel. From the TV Today group, she joined Times Now, again as part of the core team that set up the channel. Her 72-hrs non-stop reportage from outside the Taj Hotel during 26/11 earned her much acclaim and was appreciated as an example of unbiased coverage of the Mumbai terror strike. She has reported extensively on national politics with special focus on the Kashmir imbroglio.

     

    From the breathlessness of breaking news to understanding the nuances of business and sports anchoring to the intricacies of entertainment and live events anchoring – Studio Talk aims to prepare the young journalists in all genres. ‘This programme is a must for anyone and everyone looking to work before the cameras in the television,” said Ms Inayet.

     

    Ms Inayet believes that journalism schools teach you how to be a good journalist. But few teach what to do before the cameras and fewer prepare you for what to expect once the cameras start rolling. That’s exactly what Studio Talk aims to do- prepare and polish newbies with an intensive 14-day program on how to be a television anchor/presenter.

     

    The course is aimed at teaching youngsters how to anchor news, business, sports and entertainment stories. The course will have studio simulated environment and the students will be taught how to work in front of the cameras and connect to the audience, ‘either as an on-field reporter who has 60 seconds to connect to the viewer with his/her story or as an anchor who has to present the final product to the audience. The students will also be taught basic make up skills so that they don’t look washed out in front of the camera.’

     

    “The camera is ruthless and does not allow you to rewind and press record the second time. Being on television is hard work. Anchors and presenters have to face all kinds of situations. From just one-line information on breaking news to anchoring in live situations,” Ms Inayet added.

     

    And, Ms Inayet definitely knows what she is talking about, given her rise from a reporter to being among the senior most anchors at Times Now. It is this extensive experience that has allowed the former Times Now Senior Editor to develop perhaps the only such training program in the country.

     

    While Ms Inayet, as the course director, will personally oversee the 14-day hands-on-training program, Studio Talk will also have some of the best names from the television industry such as Mandira Sawhney Lalwani, former presenter, Times Now, ESPN, Ten Sports & Star News; Prerana Thakur Desai, Producer, Aamir Khan Productions; Ragini Kumar, former sports anchor, Times Now; Mikhail K Vaswani Presenter, Neo Cricketer and Ameet Sawant, Producer & Director, 96 Karatz Productions as guest lecturers to share their experiences on topics like Inside A Television Newsroom, Teleprompter Training, Fundamentals Of News Anchoring, Handling ‘Breaking News’, On Field Reportage and other such relevant topics.

     

    At the end of the 14-day course, the student will be awarded a certificate and a demo CD on completion of the workshop. “Earlier we could learn from our mistakes on the job. But now there is no time to make mistakes. The demo CD ensures that the recruiters realise that the person knows what in required to be in front of the TV,” concluded Ms Inayet.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] Grrrrr! Why do people speak so much on News TV?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The best news programme in India has to be The Week That Wasn’t on CNN-IBN. Since it steadfastly refuses to save India and the world and shamelessly makes fun of everyone, it fails miserably on the high-pitched hysteria count. But it wins on all the others. And it makes you wish that the programme had more than a weekly format because if you spend three evenings running watching our other worthies, it is enough to make you scale to the top of a tall building without a safety harness.

     

    After his marathon election extravaganza, I have found Arnab Goswami and his channel a dead bore. Also, they spend too much time discussing the minutiae of the Indian cricket board’s digestive processes. Plus, when they do, Boria Mazumdar comes on air and this disrupts my digestive processes. So I tried to give a fair hearing to NDTV, Headlines Today and CNN-IBN (am currently in Tata Sky land which does not carry Newsx).

     

    Rajdeep Sardesai on Monday night went on and on about the UPA government collapsing, a third front forming and mid-term elections approaching. None of his guests – Devesh Thakur of the JD (U), Pinaki Mishra of the BJD and Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress agreed with him. Sardesai laboured the point and the rest pooh-poohed him. I fail to see the point of such a programme. Then Sardesai announced that Chandan Mitra was arriving on the show so I quickly switched to NDTV. And to my horror, there was Chandan Mitra on NDTV. This was too much to handle and I tried to look for a tall building (with no safety harness) but there aren’t too many in Dehra Dun where I am now.

     

    On NDTV just before the horror of the spectacle of Chandan Mitra, Sonia Varma had Arvind Kejriwal on the show. He said that the results of the Uttar Pradesh government, where the Samajwadi Party effectively trounced the BSP, reflected the anger of the people against the Congress Party. Varma, if she had false teeth, would have swallowed them. Serves her right for inviting a member of Team Anna to start broadcasting their bizarre logic all over again.

     

    Headlines Today was on a trip which I couldn’t understand, a mixture of cricket and the government falling, but none of them cohesively.

     

    On NDTV Profit, Srinivasan Jain attempted to interview Aditya Ghosh, president of Indigo airlines, about why they were more profitable than the others and what about Kingfisher. However Jain spoke so much that Ghosh’s views got lost in a series of “having said thats”.

     

    Still on NDTV, Prannoy Roy had a panel discussion with several industrial worthies at a Mumbai college. Rahul Bajaj spoke so much that no one else had a chance, so that was that.

     

    The good news was that someone actually found the world-famous Bollywood Super Star Nupur Mehta who is now going to sue The Sunday Times (phoren) for calling her a “honey trap” used by bookies to lure cricketers into cheating. But no one told me whether it was just because her picture was used or because she really was the honey trap. Anyway, I had never heard of her before and any minute now my ignorance will be exposed because she is the star of Ra One, The Robot, Dirty Picture and more. No?

     

    Finally, I took refuge in Rajya Sabha TV which was so serious and sober that I felt that I had entered a parallel universe which completely disoriented me, so I went back to watching tennis.