Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, has written about the short-sighted madness in Indian news channels while proclaiming 2006 as the year when “Reality TV on Indian news channels took off“.

His justification is the epitome of ambivalence -

The results are apparent - trivia gets passed off as news, titillation of the viewer/reader takes precedence over solid information. Nor is it easy for a news editor to make the right choices. Just put yourself in the mind of a television news editor, especially in a Hindi news channel, where the competitive pressures are perhaps the greatest. What does the editor do when week after week he finds that the programmes that get him maximum ratings are those where he has ‘found’ - or, worse still, ‘created’ - some ‘action’, preferably live and unedited?

If the choice is between a group of professors engaged in a minor scuffle with the police, and a cabinet meeting on disinvestment, the temptation to stay with the ‘action’ story is obvious.

Oh yeah, we recognise whats wrong but it makes business sense. I used to have some respect for him and CNN-IBN, but I ain’t investing in the IPO. Sorry, news isn’t reality TV! I just don’t see them being relevant beyond a few years if they aren’t principled. You don’t build businesses by falling to the levels of your competitors, you do by means of quality and value addition. I’m just glad NDTV is still keeping away from turning into a reality/tabloid channel.

On an aside, how many people publicly admit that they’ve sold their souls to the devil?

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but couldn’t get down to doing it. What we saw on the weekend of 22-23rd July was, as Murali Krishnan puts it aptly, the nadir as far as the news channels are concerned.

What started off as coverage of an unfortunate accident, ended up being portrayed as a National tragedy. With around 20 “national” news channels, all of them having a generic, countrywide focus, there was a mad rush to cover the episode. By sunday, most TV channels had resorted to 24×7 live coverage of the rescue effort. The couple of saner ones tried their best to stick to their regular programming, but still had to give a significant airtime to Prince and his rescue, since everyone else was doing it.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get crazier, the Prime Minister of a country of a billion people comes out with a “statement” on this issue. Forgive me Mr. Prime Minister, while I appreciate your concerns and prayers, do you come out with a statement every time someone is involved in an accident? Or were you just doing it because every other politician was trying to hog the limelight?

Things reached a dramatic climax - reporters commentating with their breaths held in anticipation fell prey to several false positives. People gathered in thousands around the well, held banners, obviously not just to grab the TV camera’s attention. There was a flood of SMSes, elevating Prince to a symbol of bravery, a National hero. Prayers were held across the country. The director of a movie where there was a similar rescue was interviewed. Nothing was spared. The Chief Minister of the state arrived just in time to “receive” the rescued boy. This was the most remarkable punctuality ever seen with a politician. Pay no heed to skeptics who say the rescue was timed to his arrival.

In 48 hours of TV coverage, it was was only the drama that was perceived as being of any importance. Every channel said that a new well was being dug, while in actual fact, only a tunnel was being dug from an existing well. Nobody raised pertinent questions such as who’s negligence was responsible for leaving a bore-well uncovered. Nobody brought out the danger of letting a thousand people throng the rescue area, and the fact that it should have been cordoned off.

If it were up to me, I’d just bring in a legislation to make weekend hobbies mandatory.

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How many times have you seen an email / message / IM of this sort -

Yahoo / Orkut / $service_provider has reached the maximum number of accounts and is deleting old accounts. However, there is this cool magical way of preserving yours. Just forward this message to everyone on your list. To send this message to everyone do this …

or one of its several variants.

It takes one bored joker to start a chain like that and it spreads like wild fire. If people thought about it for a second, they wouldn’t continue the rumour, but that doesn’t ever happen. I’ve stopped getting irked when I get those messages, instead, I wonder how the person who sent it to me could fall for such a prank. I’m sure everyone who’s used one of the “community” services / IM has received such a message more than once. After a while, if a person continued to forward those messages, that would mean they genuinely believe that their account was rescued the last time they forwarded the message.

Its not just lonely teenagers that join in the madness. I receive majority of these messages from smart, highly educated folks, not so insignificant number of them work for big software companies.

It’d be a good endeavour to do some analysis of human behaviour using this. Let me see, I need to select one of those services, put in a beacon somewhere, and watch as the action unfolds. I’m gonna do this one of these weekends when I’m feeling particularly evil.

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There’s no denying it. We’re a nation of reactive laws. Take for instance, the age old rule against serving liquor on domestic flights -

Long ago, liquor was, in fact, allowed onboard domestic flights. However, it was stopped after one Maharashtra minister, who could not control himself after gulping a few drinks, misbehaved with airhostesses.

Why is it that we react to situations like these and penalise the other 99% well behaved citizen? The rule itself makes no sense. What would the same minister when he’s had a couple of drinks more than he can handle on an International flight, or for that matter, in his favourite-neighbourhood-bar? I am sure that for every such incident reported in the press, there are a hundred others of drunk men harassing women. Just the fact that it involved a high-profile personality at a out-of-layman’s-reach place, entitles it to a ban?

This attitude to law making / enforcement is seen everywhere you look, another example being the sudden reappearance of the tinted glass law. Its akin to treating a symptom rather than the disease. In these scenarios, would the laws actually stop drunken misbehaviour or all forms of rape? Why make laws against specific instances of the crime? Why not curb all drunken misbehaviour or have strong laws and enforcement as a deterrent against rape.

In most cases, these laws are reactions to events sensationalised in the press. I wonder what this approach to lawmaking would lead to.

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There you have it, after the latest rounds of “to-blog-or-not-to” arguments, my blog / journal is revived to its current form. Lets see how this goes.

I’ll try and import all (most) of my earlier stuff to this location over the next few days.

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