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THE BREAKING NEWS SYNDROME
By AJAY KUMAR
You can see the glint in the eyes of a senior government official as
he stretches his hands out to collect the wad of notes pretext - he
is about to issue a fake birth certificate. Switch the channel no
one wants a three year old girl child neither her parents nor her
grandparents. Asha's parents are divorced and are due to re-marry
they don't want the additional responsibility of an innocent girl. A
social analyst, a lawyer, the child's parents and grand parents are
being moderated by a news anchor to find out what will happen to the
child. Flip the remote again the foreign minister of India has had
to leave his post as his name figures in a list of beneficiaries who
have made slush money in UN oil for food program during Saddam
Hussian's regime. Switch once more a business tycoon's daughter has
had a sex change to inherit her father's property. Confused what to
watch?
Welcome to the changing world of News channels. With more than two
dozen news channels in languages as varied as the multi cultural India
Indian broadcast Industry is set for a sonic boom. Interestingly the
number of national networks in India today far outnumbers the entire
strength of television networks in developed countries like the United
States of America or the United Kingdom. Needless to say the sheer
vastness and number of viewers in India provides a huge market. Market
dynamics apart, today the Indian audience is the crowned King. At the
flick of the remote button, discerning Indian audiences decide the
fate of networks that may profess altruistic aims of spreading
awareness, but in pure economical terms, are in the business to
generate revenue.
It is this business of revenue that has urged TV channels to scout for
stories that are as varied as cheese is to chalk. Little wonder then,
that the game of one-up-man-ship has set in so you see an Inspector
General of Police dressed as a woman seeped in love of Lord Krishna
dancing in trans on one channel, to the tennis starlet Sania Mirza
giving intellectual discourse on the pressures of being an
international tennis star.
With more than a dozen national networks, the competition is nerve
breaking. Networks push reporters to be the first - to get exclusive
stories. The mantra today is - reach out to the people, relay their
lives, pain, misery, hunger, desperation, depravation, corruption,
official neglect, bureaucratic apathy, obtrusive rituals, myths,
religions fervor, sex and passion in the glamour world - sleazy under
belly of prostitution, personal lives of the rich and famous nothing
skips the roving eye of the camera. Three letters TRP- has become
the buzz word. The preset age TV journalism slogan if your news
can't hold the audiences, then it's no news.
While, television news is changing the lives of millions - today, in
the mad rush to sustain viewer ship, a number of networks are
presenting the anti-thesis of news. The red flash with Breaking News
has become a dirty word amongst the intellectuals. A new policy
statement by the government - a criminal act by a politician - a
bomb explosion killing innocents - rape in a slum in a metros dead
body in a locked house kidnapping of a businessman or a child an
actor kissing his girlfriend in a party a socialite changing his/her
sex a pornographic MMS clip networks today term all these as
BREAKING NEWS and follow it up as Exclusive.
The merits and pitfalls of such editorial decisions can be debated or
at best whisked under the carpets as pangs of an emerging news market.
One thing is sure the playing field is never going to be the same.
The power of visuals has edged the dominance of print journalism. Many
in the paper industry may not agree, but today the newspapers per
force are devoting more space to stories that would have featured in
their news update section. Or else how can one explain the Mumbai
edition of the Times of India devoting 9 pages to the extradition of
underworld don, Abu Salem. Needless to say, television channels had
virtually exhausted all possible dimensions of the news for more than
24 hours.
The world of news today has changed. Long winding political speeches
which till early 2000 dominated television space was nudged out. In
turn, politicians turned sound bite savvy. Uncouth politicians were
out a suave, articulate, intelligent, witty repartee during
political paw-wow was in. The five yearly democratic fair
parliamentary and assembly elections - no longer remained in the
purview of state. Exit polls, opinion polls and day long poll analysis
went a long way in bringing the electoral politics to drawing rooms.
Netas (politicians) now fought for airtime alongside Abhinetas
(actors). If the face of news was changing so were the numbers which
established beyond doubt that the 21 st century is the age of
broadcast. The average news viewing share increased to roughly 55
minutes in 24 hours. The advertising pie for news channels passed over
500 crores rupees annually. News became a lucrative business.
But, the billion dollar question is how this genie was uncorked to
make the masses dictate what they want to - from the days of state run
electronic media in Doordarshan . The genesis can be traced to the
forces of market which nudged India in the early nineties. Market
reforms, liberalization and active participation of international
players - unlocked the Indian economy. This necessitated ready
availability of information which till then was under the purview of
the government. Government controlled Doordharshan and All India Radio
the twin sources of broadcast was the lone window to the outside
world. But the "American Crusade" against Saddam Hussain during the
Gulf war in the beginning of nineties, changed all this.
In the corridors of power that be the bureaucrats and politicians
took a decision that changed the face of television. Private
production houses were allowed to produce daily news programs for the
official broadcaster Doordarshan. The credibility, acceptability and
people oriented approach soon changed the course of news that was to
come.
Even the most optimist media watchers in the mid - nineties would
laugh in your face if you talked about the possibility of multiple
news channels in a span of five to seven years. Converts to television
journalism were frowned upon by print journalists as shallow publicity
hungry - bite soldiers. But, the mid- nineties itself, saw the
beginning of private news broadcast. The Kargil skirmish between India
and Pakistan in 1999 brought the vagaries of war into the bedroom of
people creating war frenzy unseen since 1962. While the debate on the
political front on the cause and effect of the Kargil skirmish was
still being fought on television screens, hijack of an Indian Airlines
plane en-route to Delhi IC 810 - proved that news channels could
shape domestic policies. The minute by minute coverage of the incident
unleashed the power of television albeit at a cost.
With its reach, power and credibility established, television news as
an industry was poised for the next leap. The year 2001 marked the
beginning of a new genre - the first Hindi news channel. Again, nobody
in the industry even gave it ten percent chances to succeed. But this
was an experiment which opened the floodgates for the proliferation of
channels in less than three years. Rapid developments like Gujarat
earthquake - Pakistani President Pervez Mussarafs visit to India -
terrorist attack on twin tower of World trade centre - Gujarat riots
propelled the the average viewer ship of news from a mere 12 minutes
in 24 hours to a whooping 31 minutes. This was a trend unheard of, in
the business of news channel. Media planner expected the growth in
broadcast news market to be in the range of 15 percent per annum.
There was one front however, on which Indian broadcasters were
actually ahead of the established western counterparts - Technology.
News channels in India stared the international trend - No more Beta
tapes. Networks brought in in-expensive but excellently portable
digital CCD cameras. The footage was dumped on computer hard disks,
could be accessed by anyone in the edit bays, editing was non-liner
and the news reports interlaced with live anchoring up-linked straight
by another set of computers. Whew! What a generational change for an
Indian network. This technological revamp was attempted by foreign
networks much later.
As a revenue model the first Hindi news channel Aaj tak formed the
basis of the broadcast boom that unleashed its powers in year 2003.
April 2003 saw the launch of a number of new news channels - NDTV
24x7, NDTV India, Sahara Samay, followed by a plethora of regional
networks by Zee, Enadu and Sahara group and the re-launch of Star News
- now in Hindi. Hence, began the reign of the masses.
People of this vast country today have the power of remote to decide,
what when where how, they want to see a news report. The remote
today decides which the number one news network is and what news is
today. While news editors of various news channels today appear
confused as to what the audience wants what will click what will
give them the viewer ship.
The audience may once again force the visionaries to put their foot in
the mouth. One is still optimistic of a mature, seasoned and well
rounded news environment in the years to come. It may just be true;
over a dozen Indian news channels may occupy the same global space as
the likes of CNN, BBC World, Sky News, Fox News. After all - India is
the Flavor internationally and India is shining too.
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 NEWS GALLERY
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