Opinion Anchors and four curious cases

1. The curious case of a good discussion not driven by the anchor: On Times Now’s pre-budget chat,the panelists,Montek Singh Ahluwalia,Rahul Bajaj and Swaminathan Aiyar talked among themselves and produced that news TV rarity,especially when economic policy is discussed: points you can take away and mull over. The show’s anchoring was marked by (a) long periods of silence and (b) questions that frequently bore a loose relationship to the panelists’ interventions.

2. The curioser case of a good discussion driven by anchors: I don’t know about you but my expectations in terms of quality discussions are especially low as far as news bulletins go. But the double anchor team on CNN-IBN’s Thursday evening news show did a good job of quizzing Kapil Sibal on his plans for education. Almost every question demanded a substantive answer. Example: isn’t the Xth standard board exam crucial for rural children who want to switch to vocational courses?

3. The still more curious case of a dry subject producing a good discussion driven by the anchor: How will a possibly poor monsoon affect the economy? You should read newspapers for that kind of stuff. But the NDTV talk on the subject showed news TV can do better than it usually does. It helped of course that two smart politicians,Prithviraj Chavan and Suresh Prabhu,and economist Subir Gokarn were on the panel. But the anchor interventions helped,too. It struck me,watching this,what difference a little prep work can do to talk TV anchoring. Let me be careful: may be all anchors always do great prep work. But it doesn’t always show. In this case,it did.

4. The curiousest case of a not-so-good discussion driven by viewer questions relayed via the anchor: NDTV had Sibal answering questions sent in by viewers and read out by the anchor. Democracy doesn’t work in everything — this was proof. Inevitably,the questions were widely disparate and sometimes strange (will primary education be made free? Government primary education is already free). It didn’t help that Sibal and the anchor were framed inside the pages of what looked like a moth-eaten book (educations is about books,did you get it?). Some of the anchor’s own questions were curious. In the context of madrassahs,Sibal was asked with a severity not merited by the issue,what do you mean by secular education? What he meant was obvious,but he dutifully repeated it.

Business news channels have this problem: they engender the expectation that when you turn to them you will see two anchors and one analyst in deep discussion about an obscure mid-cap company. Will ET Now break the mould? Way too early to tell. But that ET Now’s screen is not cluttered with stock market-related squiggles is perhaps a good sign.

My idea of a must-watch business channel programme: take a complex business/economic news story and give the viewers a fair idea of what the fuss is all about. And don’t confuse the Sensex with life.

saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com