MxMIndia

Tag: news

  • The columns by famous Indian TV anchors Rajdeep has reduced the effectiveness of the Hindustan Times edit page by half, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Why TV anchors must not write on edit pages

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    I now understand the pain of being a TV journalist. There is no avenue within the medium to become a pontificator. For print journalists, it’s easy. You work a few years as a reporter-correspondent-sub-editor and then some boss type person decides you have some writing skills that can be further explored or some pages fall short of stories and some boss type person makes you write a quick news analysis or you are a boss type person and decide (or someone tells you) that the world wants to know what you think. And you know how angry print journalists can get if their “columns” are stopped, if you read the excerpts of Kuldip Nayar’s memoirs. The reader then believes that these columnists and analysts are experts.

     

    But what can a TV journalist do? Having spend years running from pillar to post saying “I am standing at the gate waiting for something to happen” interspersed with many in facts and of courses – “I am of course standing at the gate in fact” – does someone say to him or her, here’s half an hour of TV time as a reward for so much standing, now say what you want?

     

    No, instead you become a prime time anchor and you have to ask other people what they think. And some of those people, in fact, of course, have to be print journalists who have now become analysts and columnists. Talk about rubbing salt in it.

     

    The result is that you yourself don’t know what to think. If you have ever read any columns by famous Indian TV anchors (I think Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagorika Ghose of CNN-IBN and Barkha Dutt of NDTV, all have columns in Hindustan Times, which has reduced the effectiveness of its edit page by half) you will know what I mean. Half the time they plug their own channels and shows and the rest of the time they sort of sum up what’s happening. There’s very little original thought there except some anodyne comment. No provocation, no incisive comment, no contrarian viewpoints. This comes from years of TV panel discussions where you have to listen to other people. Print journalists are terribly egoistical and after a few years stop listening to other people and only like other people to listen to them. This gives them a great advantage as pontificators.

     

    (I must here advise newspaper editors to end this new trend of giving columns to journalists with little or no experience because they are even less readable than TV anchors. Youth may be attractive but it has its limitations.)

     

    What is the solution for famous TV anchors? Instead of bothering to write which they can’t, they should get their back on usual suspect panellists. Call them to their studios and make them question the anchor. The anchor will then hold forth while the panellists listen. However, the anchor is not allowed to ask questions…

     

    This way, we might find out if they can actually think. India wants to know.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist, commentator and Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own. Twitter: @ranjona

     

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

    Ranjona Banerji: I also hate the chip chip!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    I’m taking off from next week and staying with the advertising industry since it is also “news” as some Indian media organisations have told us for years. Also, you cannot escape advertising if you watch the news or read newspapers and magazine. After careful consideration and consultation with others, it is clear that Priyanka Chopra’s “chip chip” ad for Garnier remains the most annoying on television. It comes on so often and with such clever cross-channel planning that you are forced to watch it unless you jump up and run every five minutes. By this time, the sun, the dog, the grass have all started looking extremely embarrassed at being made party to the ill-matched song and dance routine.

     

    But close to this one are those with annoying children like the rude boy in the McCain’s ad. I don’t see why he deserves to be treated with various kinds of fried potatoes. He should stay in his room downloading food while his family has fun without him. Next is the little girl in the Cadbury’s ad who is smiled on indulgently/ protected for not wanting to share her chocolate. (I am far more generous. If anyone gives me a chocolate product made by Cadbury’s I promptly give it away.)

     

    Today’s newspapers say that table manners are becoming a thing of the past. The advertising industry has long known this which is why it is particularly fond of promoting messy eating. People who eat Cadbury chocolates not only give each other long and profound looks while discussing vegetables they don’t want to eat, they also manage to get half the bar of the chocolate they’re eating all over their faces. This is an Indian rule I think and also applies to eating ice-cream. To save money, these ads should be joint ventures with washing machine/washing powder companies and maybe even whatever Garnier is selling in that “chip chip” ad.

     

    Then there are irritating mothers – based on the general feeling that the advertising industry specialises in mothers you want to murder. The Kellogg’s mother, who does something as amazingly innovative (sarcasm emoticon please) as putting almonds on top of a bowl of cornflakes, wins the current round of MYWM. If Kellogg’s only sold their variety of cornflakes with almonds in it in India, she wouldn’t have to be quite so smugly clever.

     

    An award has to be given to both Rahul Bose and Mahesh Bhupathi for agreeing to tell us that their mouths are full of germs. This is courage extraordinary. Also, for the ungrammatical manner in which they both say: “and much less germs”. Since both speak very good English the rest of the time, one assumes (or hopes) that Colgate paid them a lot of money.

     

    Vodafone’s attempt to make old men cuddly and lovable after Tata Docomo’s portrayal of them as curmudgeonly and crotchety should win an anti-ageism award at one of the next 1,000 award ceremonies the advertising industry seems to organise. At which, the best actress award has to go to Anushka Sharma for not only being convincing in selling cameras, internet services, scooters and so on but also for beating Amitabh Bachchan, Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra and all the rest of the stalwarts for successful grabbing of TV time.

     

    Currently, there are several ads for a film called Cocktail starring, I think, Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone. I saw a film called Cocktail once. It had Tom Cruise in it. Any relation?

     

     

     

  • Ranjona Banerji writes about a grouse. Either spewing venom or tongue-in-cheek

    Ranjona Banerji: Irritating ads that irritate

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Am stepping on a few toes here and other people’s territory but then wothehell. As much news as you watch on TV (or as much TV that you watch, be honest) you’re forced to watch as much advertising as content.

     

    And sometimes it’s fun (like Hari Sadu and naukri.com) or even the poor chappie who thinks he’s eating chicken, but it turns out to be a doggie. Or Fastrack’s funny series on the risqué side with Genelia D’Souza and Virat Kohli. Or even the Flipkart ads where children play adults.

     

    But what does one make of Priyanka Chopra squirming about on the ground to a song that does not match the bizarre dance she does as she tells us she hates the “chip chip”. All that happens for Garnier is that most people throw up and switch channels.

     

    Through the telecast of Wimbledon on Star Sports you get to hear that “amazing Thailand always amazes”. Well, duh, couldn’t they think of another word? Or has someone done Thailand tourism in?

     

    The Kelloggs ads with that vastly annoying mother who does something as simple as throw a few almonds on a bowl of cereal and pretends she’s invented sliced bread is anodyne as such ads normally are.

     

    But the winners of the most irritating ads have to be Reliance Foundation and Coca-Cola. Insensitivity seems to rule the Coca-Cola ad in which a group of not very well off (how do I say this politely?) children play cricket in some dusty desert scrub land as a voice over tells us poetically how they have no cricket bat, ball, stumps, the pavilion has no roof and so on and ends some poignant note about how this is not play but the call of the earth or something. Then Sachin Tendulkar with his strange new hairstyle drinks a Coke and says play on. The children and Tendulkar never meet and you get the feeling that the children cannot afford to drink Coca-Cola, certainly not one each.

     

    And there’s the Reliance Foundation. I’m not getting to the connection with the programme Satyamev Jayate. For one, the ad looks like a copy of the Vedanta ad, which claimed to be saving the lives of various village children with schools and food and making their dreams come true. The ad ran into as many problems as Vedanta does with its mining projects and the company’s attempt to redeem itself with this real or exaggerated NGO social work effort did not work.

     

    If indeed Nita Ambani is moving into social work, an ad that copies an already discredited ad is surely not the best vehicle. Also, the figures put up for the number of children fed or schooled or clothed is embarrassingly small for a company the size of Reliance. Even worse, Nita Ambani’s look is so carefully crafted that it looks just that. Also makes her ears look unnaturally large.

     

    Hidden persuasion is fine. But these are attempts at such blatant manipulation that they are not just exploitative, they may not even work.

     

    For those interested in advertising and how it works, try and catch The Gruen Transfer on the Australia Network or Youtube. Hosted by Australian comic Will Anderson, it is funny, incisive, intelligent and hard-hitting. And did I say funny?

     

    All right, I’ll watch the news from tomorrow.

     

  • In Media Matrix, Paritosh Joshi discusses, analyses and deliberates on the fundamentals of key industry issues

    Paritosh Joshi: Unbundling the Living Room

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    An erstwhile colleague was talking about the proliferation of the second television set. In her assessment, as many as 10% of all C&S homes now have more than one TV. Listen close. 10% of ~100 million homes. That’s 10 million multi-TV homes in the country. From 1 TV for every 5 viewers, the equation has changed sharply, for these 10 million homes to 1 TV for every 2.5 viewers. Evidently there will be consequences. (And as you shall soon see, it is even better (or worse) than that).

     

    Whether you look at Hindi, English or any of the languages in which TV is offered in India, there is a common architecture that defines the structure of the market. Three pillars hold it up: big and hefty General Entertainment, massive Sports (shared across language barriers by offerings only in two languages) and wildly proliferating News with lots of fragile strands. Since Sports really has no local identity, focused as it is on the national obsession with Cricket, and News offers no heft, the defining feature of TV in every language is GEC. Dig a little deeper and the content logic of the GEC genre starts to become evident.

     

    GECs got blueprinted by the late 1990s. Indeed, you could argue that the basic template was in place even long before that, in the form of Doordarshan. Homes had one TV. Most people in the family, barring the housewife, would be away from the home for educational or employment reasons for several hours a day. The family would only start to congregate in the Living Room from about 6 p.m. as the members returned from wherever the day’s chores had taken them. By 8ish, there was a full house and smart programmers would be offering up delights that everyone would lap up without discomfort or embarrassment. The stereotypical picture of the Great Indian Family sharing and bonding before the Great Indian Entertainment TV Channel would now be complete. It was almost hard to discern where the khandan on TV ended and the parivaar in the Living Room began.

     

    Anyone who lived through the late 90s and early years of this millennium will recall vividly, as the stentorian authority of Amitabh Bachchan delivering his signature ‘Namaskar! Aadab! Sat Sri Akal’ echoed through domestic hallways in over a half of our country, he would have everyone jostling to find their favourite spot before the TV dabba. Once said spot was secured, it would be squatted on until the day’s K serials and such wrapped up.

     

    While all Hindi channels picked up the simple formula of family values and ‘rona dhona’ very quickly- thereby making them all look like reduced sized copies of the industry’s 500 pound gorilla, the regional players weren’t far behind. The model was perfected in Hindi and swiftly exported to markets in all regional languages.

     

    In the meanwhile, India was getting more prosperous as the economy saw half a decade of near double-digit economic expansion. At the same time, the telecommunications revolution was well and truly upon us. Call rates for mobile telephony fell in a frenzied race to the bottom. Handsets started developing capabilities far beyond the basic voice and text and shedding the boring monochrome screen for a jazzed up colour display. More onboard memory with scope of incrementing it further by more and more capacious SD cards, faster processors and rendering engines that took blur and dullness out of the mobile desktop screen enabled altogether new consumption possibilities on the tiny (but also growing fast) cellphone screens. Other screens were entering the repertoire. A second TV was seen as a mark of upward mobility. Desktop computers were becoming indispensable particularly in middle class homes with school- or college-going youngsters.

     

    Sources of AV content were growing far beyond C&S TV with young, urban consumers discovering the forbidden joys of ‘torrents’ that had reawakened, in a new morph, the only recently exorcised Napster. And there were so many alternatives on where the content, thus secured, could be consumed. The second TV would often come attached to a DVD player, or even a gaming console both of which did a commendable job of playing content. Even the little mobile device in the pocketwas rapidly becoming powerful enough to store and play not just songs and clips, but long form entertainment sourced from friend and stranger.

     

    The tyranny of the compulsory assembly before the glowing siren in the Living Room was being challenged by sundry interlopers big and small that were leading an uprising of person specific content.

     

    Oblivious to these tectonic changes in the landscape, programmers and channel heads, with their heads still stuck firmly up their <scatology deleted> outmoded notions of the ‘One big, happy family’ continued to design and programme General Entertainment. “Hey, you can have a car of any colour you want”, they incanted, “so long as it is black”. But who was listening? The young ‘uns had already found shiny, sleek, colourful new rides that they could scoot away in.

     

    p.s. for Programmers and Channel Heads: You may not have noticed it yet, honey, but someone just unbundled the Living Room.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via the comments board below or his Twitter handle @paritoshZero.

     

     

  • News anchoring is all about credibility. The more you establish your substance, the more the viewer will notice your style, says Mahrukh Inayet

    The Anchor: Mahrukh Inayet on 5 reasons why anchoring is more about substance than style

    By Mahrukh Inayet

     

    1. News always comes first

    Viewers want the news first. Rest, very little matters. Your style has little bearing on the viewer nor does it alter the impact of news on the viewer. Facts are sacrosanct. Information rules. It needs no garnishing.

     

    2. The new age viewer

    Today’s viewer is a global citizen. Aware, informed, educated and opinionated. More importantly, s/he is consistently running against time. They get their news and boom – they are out. Your personality might make them stop, but it is the news that will make them stay.

     

    3. Credibility

    News anchoring is all about credibility. The more you establish your substance, the more the viewer will notice your style. But remember, substance comes first. Think about it – most well known TV faces have been around for years. In theUS, the average age for prime time anchors is 60. Larry King, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather – the list is endless.

     

    4. Journalism v/s Style

    News does not come in fancy packages. It’s hard hitting and raw. Floods, drought, bomb blasts, terror strike, petrol prices – can you even imagine viewers bothering with anything but the information.

     

    5. News, not the newsreader

    In broadcast journalism school you are taught to conduct yourself in a manner that takes attention away from you and highlights what you are presenting. News anchors only disseminate the news – they are the medium, not the message

     

    Mahrukh Inayet is Former Senior Editor, Times Now

     

  • Every mid-week, Ranjona Banerji writes about a grouse… either spewing venom or tongue-in-cheek. Or both 🙂

    Ranjona Banerji: Getting a bum deal from Yahoo India

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Last month, I dumped my Reliance internet connection (dip in connectivity and more importantly, rude service) and opted for Tata Photon. But my grouse is not with either of them. It is with Yahoo India. The Tata Photon opens with a Yahoo India page (I can’t shut it down too quickly because then Mozilla Firefox won’t reload and I can’t go back to Google Chrome because it slows down my machine and particularly did not like this website… so who said the internet was all plain sailing!).

     

    The page is dominated by Bollywood nonsense (celebrities who married young, star break ups that hurt us more than it hurt them) and then a sprinkling of political news in the next segment and only cricket news in the next.

     

    I am now inured to the stranglehold which Bollywood has on our lives. But I still question a news source which can look no further than the lowest common denominator. I also don’t quite know if the average internet user in India wants only Bollywood and cricket and nothing else. Has Tata Photon done any such research about its average user?

     

    Out of curiosity and since the damn page was open, on Tuesday evening I ventured further into the Yahoo India page and decided to see how it treated other news. In the sports category, there were only cricket, tennis and football, in that order. I went to tennis since that’s my area of interest. There was a story about Maria Sharapova, nothing at all about Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic’s French Open battle and Nadal’s historic seventh French Open title.

     

    Instead I see a story about how reality TV star, Kim Kardashian, “flashed her bums” during some family tennis match. I went no further into the story, credited to ANI, but it is wrong on so many levels. For one, the English. It is not “flashed her bums”. Bums when it applies to the buttocks is a singular entity, like bottom. Unless Kardashian has cultivated a collection of homeless drunks which she brought along to a family tennis match.

     

    But more than the grammar, it is the intent which is offensive. I understand that sex is a human impulse which beats all others (well…). But why should this daft little story find itself in a sports section of a well-known website? Is there any connection with tennis at all? If I wanted to fulfil my baser instincts on the internet there are enough explicit sites for my guilty pleasures. Yahoo India is not the preferred choice for anyone, unless that it is intention? The Yahoo.com website has an excellent, up to the minute and comprehensive sports section. Is Yahoo India so far away from there?

     

  • Emerging technologies are playing a big role in bringing about this shift from traditional TV (latent viewing) to active TV (active viewing), says Anil Garg

    The Anchor: Anil Garg on 10 reasons why specialty channels are the need of the hour

    By Anil Garg

     

    The television landscape in India has seen a paradigm shift in the last few years.  From a plethora of channels offering General Entertainment, News including Business & Market News, Music, Movies, Kids, Sports and so on, one is seeing the emergence of newer specialized genres such as Infotainment, Food, “Classroom” Education, Science and Technology, Specialty Sports (e.g. Golf), Home Shopping and Travel.  There are dozens of reasons for this (be it advances in technologies, affordability, availability, changing lifestyles and such) here are TEN reasons why specialty content will not only survive but thrive in the coming years:

     

    1. Consumer Awareness and Demand

    India, like most other countries, is fast realising that audiences are increasingly discerning especially with multiple TV households in Tier I, II and even III cities across all SEC groups.  Look at how Discovery has diversified from a single channel to Discovery Science and Discovery Turbo; or for that matter NatGeo. Infotainment content is entertaining and educative. Today people increasingly want to learn and know more about the world they live in. For instance, one would never stop a child watching a clip on the “Blue pottery of Jaipur” as opposed to watching cartoons on a kid’s channel.

     

    2. The Nature of Specialized Content

    Specialised content such as a cookery show or a travel show does not need to be in a 30 minute format, so typical of traditional television. Specialised content can be “snacky”; a five minute show on the “Fishing Nets of Kerala” or “48 hours in Cairo” can ignite the angst and aspiration in the mind of viewers who have or would love to experience this. Such content can be informative, educative and yet entertaining. Also such content appeals across all age groups four-adult. Plus, it is non-controversial as in there is no rape or murder or such.

     

    3. Passion

    People who want specialized content are passionate about it. So are the viewers! Take for instance Food or Travel. Specialised content has to be produced by people serious about the domain. As more and more people choose to work in their field of interest, so will they choose to talk about it in more and more creative ways. Likewise, an ever increasing consumer base aware about the affordable availability of such content will tune into what they are passionate about.

     

    4. Forever Content

    Most specialized content is forever in that it does not age. A show on the Taj Mahal or the Pushkar Mela is timeless. Unlike most soaps, reality shows or sporting events, most infotainment content is ageless and can be watched again and again for generations. We still love to watch a clip on what Mumbai looked like in the 50’s even though it is black and white; this will be the case even fifty years hence!

     

    5. Technology including New Media

    Affordable technology makes it possible to offer thousands of channels to viewers.  Technology trends, be it the downward cost of increasingly powerful Cameras, inexpensive video editing Software, dramatically reducing Storage cost, affordable and increased Bandwidth, ever increasing Connectivity, Interactive and Mobile devices and increasing use of innovative Applications – all this makes it possible for a specialized channels to stream to their audiences, anytime, everywhere. As rich content moves from Beta tapes to digital video formats, from huge physical libraries to compact server scale storage in a box, growing a business around this new realisation that the concept of space has changed will help new age entrepreneurs build organisations and brand architectures with specialized content.

     

    6. Portable Content

    The very nature of specialised content is interesting. There is a growing need and demand for on the move infotainment and on demand infotainment (e.g. what to see and do inSingapore), as opposed to a two-three hour movie. As consumer attention spans get shorter, information they seek has to be at their finger tips “here and now”.  Thanks to technology, this is made possible. Specialised content is easy to port for on-demand viewing.

     

    7. Going Digital – Growth of Television and the Net

    As India moves to digitization with the possibility of a 500-1000 channels though fibre and cable to the home, multiple TV households, increased Internet bandwidth and technologies such as 3 and 4G for the masses, affordable yet powerful handheld devices, access to specialized content will be easier and affordable for consumers.  Also for aggregators and distributors of such content, it will be imperative to reach out to every single viewer with a rich and varied offering.

     

    8. Education

    As the Indian population comes to grips with evolving technologies, the nature of content, applications and their usage will explode. From ten years ago when not many people used an ATM machine or a cell phone, the scenario is changing rapidly and dramatically. As people learn how to use a phone for purposes other than talking, to using the net for purposes other than checking emails or making a railway booking, we will see people searching for informative content and entertainment.

     

    9. Targeted appeal

    For advertisers, sponsors and the like, specialized channels offer a focused, targeted audience. Also, technology is fast reducing the costs for reaching out to the customer and getting a better handle of behavioural and psychometric testing – e.g. social media and viral.

     

    10. Business Sense

    Businesses understand the reasons above.  Channels like a GEC, Movies, or Sports are very expensive to setup and operate; in India we have seen many such channels go down.  For the cost of a single show on a channel in these traditional genres, it is possible to setup and operate a specialized channel and also to make it profitable. Ten years ago not many people thought that a channel like Discovery made any business sense! Also, specialized infotainment channels have multiple revenue streams; the touch-points for consumers sourcing information of interest are multiple.  The same content can be sampled on TV, researched in print and enabled/fulfilled via the web as an example – all thanks to technology.

     

    In a nutshell, emerging technologies are playing a big role in bringing about this shift from traditional TV (latent viewing) to active TV (active viewing).  For instance in a specialized genre such as Travel, television can provide excellent programming backed up by a supporting interactive mechanism either through a website or an interactive mobile gadget which can create lead generation for travel booking, with applications that can provide ‘here and now’ information while at home or office or on the go. This increases the opportunity base and revenue potential for all possible trade partners – traditional travel operators, tourism boards, hotels and airlines, fleet operators and more – with the help of emerging new media technologies which help link up all possible interactions.

     

    As all trends point to specialized content, such content will become the trend!

     

    Anil Garg is Chairman & Managing Director, Explore Travel Channel

     

  • Ranjona Banerji believes that the papers must devote half a page so that hapless viewers can make sense of all that the news channels air

    Newspapers must make sense of TV news

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Something has to be done about newspapers being so serious and stick-in-the-mud. Look at yesterday on television. There was so much excitement over two loos at the Planning Commission’s offices – spending Rs 35 lakh to do potty comfortably while millions of Indians were consigned to surviving happily on Rs 32 a day (am being generous here). To rub salt in the wound, Rs5 lakh was spent on a security system to keep the janata-public out. Everyone was spitting fire, from the opposition to activists to ordinary people. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission also had a wee tantrum – at the media and also RTI, which opened the bathroom doors as it were.

     

    Then Thursday morning comes and you open the newspaper. Hmmm. Does anyone oblige you by putting the story upfront with lots of diagrams and graphic details? Of course not – there’s just news on display like the economy and monsoon and a murder here and there. You have to trawl through the newspaper – page 12 or 15 or something to get a small little story about this toilet transgression. Even that CWG man who said that Indians have different cleanliness standards – anyone remember him – because of dirty bathrooms at CWG homes got more purchase on the press. Of course, I don’t remember his name but that may be because my brain has very strict hygiene protocols.

     

    If this example of newspaper perfidy is not bad enough, how about the other big story of the day? Some folliclely challenged man in Indonesia had something to do with Jharkhand politician and former chief minister Madhu Koda’s ill-gotten crores of rupees. The part of the day that wasn’t about Montek’s potty was about Koda’s friend. Some squeaky tapes played on and on as the anchors’ voices tried to match them for squeakiness and outdid them in decibel levels. Don’t ask me what the whole thing was about because I never figured it out. I must also clarify that I have nothing against men or women who don’t have a lot of hair on their heads but I have no other way of identifying this man who has something to do with Indonesia.

     

    Is one to find a code in the morning’s newspapers? Nyet, nada and all the rest of it. The monsoon and its arrival got more play in the newspapers than Koda’s not too hairy on the head friend and all that money. There will be at least one grateful person.

     

    It’s been said before, but it has to be said again. Newspapers must dedicate at least half a page a day making sense of TV news stories for hapless viewers.

     

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

    Wanted: translators for press conferences

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This is targeted at TV newswallahs. They have a tendency to show us live press conferences that they deem to be important, from across the country. This week, we had Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, after the victory of the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League. Then we had Kiran Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, on the arrest of his predecessor’s son Jagan Mohan Reddy by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

     

    All very commendable, bringing us the news when it happens. The grouse? Banerjee spoke in Bengali and Reddy in Telugu. This of course makes it virtually impossible for anyone to understand what they’re saying. The on-screen translation process was extremely slow and then, only paraphrased their remarks. Which means for about 3 minutes of someone talking, you got about two lines of material. The reason I know this is because I understand Bengali and have a smattering of Telugu.

     

    If anyone is old enough to remember, it was a bit like the scene in Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator where the typist is taking dictation from the Adolf Hitler character, Adenoid Hynkel. Hynkel talks and talks and the stenographer types two words.

     

    On the BBC and al Jazeera this week, a live press conference with the British foreign secretary and Russian foreign minister on the Syria issue was also covered.

     

    When the Russian minister spoke there was a live voice translation. One understands that the translations were provided by the governments concerned and not the TV channels but it is a process which a multilingual country like ours needs to understand.

     

    It might be more sensible for a reporter present to provide a paraphrasing of events rather than subject people to listening to something they cannot understand. Neither press conference, it has to be said, was particularly scintillating.

     

    * * *

     

    There were few scuffles and a lathi-charge in Kolkata’s Eden Gardens when the celebrations were being held. All afternoon, Times Now behaved as if it was covering a major riot and hundreds had been badly injured. Even if you dislike Mamata Banerjee and Shah Rukh Khan, some perspective please. NDTV called it a “mild lathi-charge” which is an unfortunate choice of words but perhaps a more appropriate sentiment.

     

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

    [MJR] Wanted: sponsors to cover the Olympics!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The biggest sporting event in the world (no, not the FIFA World Cup) is due to begin in a couple of months. So how many Indian newspapers are going to send someone to cover the Olympic Games in London? This is where Indian sportspersons are hoping to make a breakthrough after Abhinav Bindra won the first individual gold medal by an Indian in Beijing. The Indian hockey team did very well in the qualifiers, leading to expectations that they will shine again in a sport which has won us eight gold medals but no one in India really watches.

     

    So what’s the grouse? The reluctance of Indian newspaper managements to spend money on newsgathering. The Olympics are not just any old event. They represent an ideal – of human endeavour, of a global spirit and a desire to push back boundaries of achievements. Editorials will declaim with thundering authority about the significance of “citius, altius, fortius” but when it comes to actually reporting on the efforts to get there, everything depends on a “sponsor”.

     

    That is, a newspaper or journal will often only cover an event like this if the marketing department can get someone to cover its expenses. One can understand the reluctance in the days when foreign travel was prohibitive and foreign currency limited by the government (yes, I know it almost seems like we’re back in those times!) but in today’s world, depending on agency feed is nothing short of laziness and taking your reader for a ride.

     

    Yet strangely, in the olden days (that is, when I was young), the idea of “junkets” was anathema and people I know lost their jobs for accepting favours. Over the years, managements realised, “why pay for something when someone else can be convinced to do it”. This is why so many sports pages – like The Times of India’s for instance – are so full of “sponsored columns” that there is hardly any place left for actual news.

    One doesn’t know yet of course how many newspapers are going to go for the easy route to the Olympics, but one hears rumours…

     

    Meanwhile, the entire film journalism community appears to be in Cannes for the film festival, where given the quality of our cinema, almost nothing makes it even within shouting distance of a tin palm, let alone a golden one. But visits to Cannes are now de rigueur on the junket circuit, so no dip in the newspaper’s bank balance there. And credibility? Well, we stopped worrying about that a long time ago.

     

  • Despite the criticism over the TRAI regulations about ads on TV channels, needless to say, as a viewer I'm a bit un-miserable

    [MJR] Un-miserable about Trai’s ad regulations

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This is actually an “un-grouse” – I go with the current zeitgeist and fascination with the un-dead (vampires) and the unlikely (werewolves).

     

    Despite the criticism on MxMIndia.com yesterday over the TRAI regulations about ads on TV channels, needless to say, as a viewer I’m a bit un-miserable. I understand the need to make money and profits and all that but sometimes watching TV can be an unhappy experience.

     

    TRAI has asked for commercial breaks to be limited to 12 minutes for every hour that there should be at least 15 minutes between consecutive breaks for programmes and every 30 minutes for movies. In addition, there are to be no part-screen or drop-down ads for live sports events. What’s to complain? It’s not as if the TV channels themselves don’t know how damn annoying constant ad breaks can be – they themselves advertise “break-less” movies as a cachet, as if the producer suddenly released a new uncut version of the film.

     

    The worst transgressors are Indian general entertainment programmes. Producers shoot what seems to be about 10 minutes of programming for those popular soaps and serials and the rest of the time is spent on dramatic repetitions of the last two minutes that transpired before the 40-odd ad breaks. Obviously someone in TRAI (or their families) watches these serials.

     

    There can be no one – except for some very brain-dead advertisers – who actually thinks that part-screen drop-down ads which mask action during a live sports events endears one to the advertiser. TRAI has only stated the obvious here.

     

    News channels are no better in particular, NDTV and CNN-IBN. If you catch them on the half-hour or the hour, you can be treated to about 10 straight minutes of advertisement. I keep hearing about how news channels are financially precarious which only leads me to believe that they ought to charge more.

     

    Times Now is terribly smart about this. During prime time, which is when editor-in chief Arnab Goswami conducts his nightly inquisition, there are minimum commercial breaks. The channel knows that people are watching for the drama and are not interested for the moment in Katrina Kaif having sex with a mango. TRPs skyrocket during Goswami’s Newshour (sometimes two hours) and Times Now knows that that benefit can be spread across the other hours of the day.

     

    It must also pointed out that newspapers and magazines also operate under some restrictions about the editorial to ad ratio and this does not lead to general hand-wringing and despair.

     

    Plus, it is also true that some ad breaks are necessary. You can make a few quick calls, run to the loo and check that the dinner is not burning. In between you might also decide that the Appy Fizz is indeed incredibly annoying and a talking soft drink should indeed be un-alive.

     

  • Political spats, crime, scams make news. Social issues are for documentary film makers, unless Aamir Khan comes with the package, says Sevanti Ninan

    The Anchor: Sevanti Ninan on 5 things she’d like to change about journalism today

    By Sevanti Ninan

     

    1. Its idea of what constitutes national

    Delhi and Mumbai.  At a pinch add Chennai and Kolkata, because Mamata and Jaya are there to provide copy.

     

    2. Its notion of public opinion

    What Twitter, Facebook and smses on TV are saying.  Get off the computer and hit the streets to find out what’s happening to those who are not on social networking sites? Na, that’s uncool. Besides being too much work.

     

    3. Its notion of the arts

    Movies, movies, Bollywood, Bollywood. Regional stars in the field of writing, art, music: confined to the regional press unless they know how to make the scene in Delhi or Mumbai.

     

    4. What makes news

    Political spats, crime, scams.  Social issues are for documentary film makers, unless Aamir Khan comes with the package.

     

    5. Its notion of what constitutes progress for both India and Bharat

    Sexy industries like telecom and IT. Education reporting means tracking the IITs. Health coverage means celebrity cancer. Primary health centres and anganwadis-what’s that and where would I find them?

     

    Sevanti Ninan is Editor, thehoot.org and Columnist, Mint