Sometimes the work I do can be very frustrating. Like most things 'Indian', we in Television also rarely question what we do. For instance, we at NDTV (like the rest of the the lot) showed the DD feed of Vijender Kumar's boxing bouts live on our channel.
Question: If I were interested in Olympics, why would I watch NDTV and not DD, that is as easily available? And if I wanted news and was watching NDTV, would I not be irritated to see the same thing that was on DD?
Many similar (quite mindless) 'cut to another channel' happens everyday. We cut to the parliamentarians' speeches when it is in session. I thought people avoided Lok Sabha Channel because it was boring! They just want us to give them the operative bits of the speeches, don't they?
I have three observations to make on this emerging trend: First, I think the logic of private channels going live to olympic events that are on DD is because most people want to watch that event as opposed to news. Fair enough. However, I guess, news channels must realise that they cannot have a share in every pie. The expertise of a news channel is to package events into intelligent news stories and give news (and analysis) about such events through out the day. Showing the entire event that we can catch anyway on another channel, is beyond my comprehension.
Second, I think, somewhere this stems from the principle of American journalism of presenting facts and only facts without adding any editorial judgement to news. Therefore, you show the entire speech of the PM so that the viewer decides what bit is important. I think, this is stretching it a bit too much. Every title (or 'super' as we call it) we give to a story shows our editorial bias. The bit of the speech we decide to take in our news packages later shows our editorial stance. After all, the viewer still trusts the journalist sitting in the newsroom (thankfully). So, I think, we should not think of it as 'being objective'.
Third, if we do cut live to a regional TV channel (show a regional channel live) or a foreign channel, it makes sense as a majority of the people would not have access to it.
However, this is now extended to DD or worse our own sister channel! NDTV profit, for instance, is just a button away. So, why will a viewer tune into NDTV 24X7 to watch NDTV Profit? If people want to know the markets, they would tune into a business channel. As a news channel we would have to simplify stock markets to our viewers, if we fail to do it, then we should at least not show our sister channel live on ours!
I understand that the TV industry is young and will mature in time. But, sometimes, really... wake up guys!
Raksha Kumar
