Opinion Too Few Yipees
On a day when even India TV assumes a semi-serious look,with its on-screen graphics strikingly and disappointingly moderate in their aesthetic...
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On a day when even India TV assumes a semi-serious look,with its on-screen graphics strikingly and disappointingly moderate in their aesthetic ambitions,news TV really does deny a devoted follower of its journalistic exuberance his/her usual nourishment. Budget Day,you see,makes news TV more news and less TV. Strange,isnt it? Before the Budget,broadcasters make people hold FM masks and encourage them to say random,silly things. Or they merrily interview small-scale entrepreneurs whose business acumen far exceeds their ability to articulate a reasoned point of view. But on B-Day,its all more or less serious business. Why,even anchors dont interrupt as much as they usually do. So lets get appropriately serious this time.
We begin by asking why CNN-IBN (a) said at one time Pranab Mukherjee has pegged fiscal deficit (as a ratio of GDP) at 5.1 per cent for 2010-11; it is 5.5 per cent actually,and to mention this is not a quibble (b) at another time got the name of two of its panellists wrong; it sounded very off-putting in a presumably high-value discussion and (c) decided to cut to bickering politicians after the Budget speech instead of concentrating more on its panel. Yes,sure,the extraordinarily infantile Opposition walkout was news,but it was still a side show. As a news consumer,I will say this,I left CNN-IBN for quite a while and concentrated on NDTV and Times Now,both of which were allowing their panels to talk (Disclosure: also on the panel were The
Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta and Contributing Editor and economist Ila Patnaik).
We ask Times Now why one of its B-Day anchors thought that only viewers of English-language news channels were the kind of people who would be affected by service tax on medical checkup services outsourced by companies. Surely,Hindi news channels are also watched by people-like-us who work in the private sector? Also,it was odd to hear a Times Now panellist say the Opposition walked out over higher taxes on tobacco products.
We ask NDTV whether its post-budget coverage wouldnt have been better had it not jumped from the main discussion to sub-discussions? That only worked when one of the sub-discussion anchors explained the change in income tax slabs. Most other times,the sub-panels were sub-par.
Special mention must be made here of the news TV practice of getting chambers of commerce types and CEOs to comment on the budget. With very few exceptions,the business types play safe. Its so incredibly predictable that from being a really boredom-inducing thing to watch it has become perversely fascinating how tepid can which CEO be. CNN-IBN,I think,relied the least on business types,at least early on after the Budget speech.
DD gets the PM to be interviewed and private news channels cut to that interview for a bit,which makes sense,but then they fade it out without ceremony,mid-interview (NDTV did this),which looks more like a producer error than a conscious editorial call. A funny thing DD,it seems,invites a print media senior business journalist to do the interview (a journalist from a different newspaper every year); but when private broadcasters suddenly cut to the DD-PM interview,most viewers cant figure out who the interviewer is. I can figure it out,because we journalists are a self-obsessed bunch. But my guess is that most viewers not watching DD wont know. Why cant private broadcasters take 10 seconds to identify the interviewer?
So,were there few truly news TV moments in B-Day coverage? It saddens me to tell you that on early evidence,I spotted only one: CNN-IBN was running a scroll of good and bad announcements,the bad stuff was called bad decision,the good stuff was called Yipee. Yes,Yipee.
By next week,Budget coverage done and dusted,news TV will doubtless be back to the yipee mode.
saubhik.chakrabrati@expressindia.com
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