Why Does Television News Suck?

This is a mystery to many of us. Certainly, Indians do not lack in talent. We have world-class journalists and are capable of incisive, well-researched reporting of serious issues facing our country.

It is hard to believe that Indians want this kind of toxic information dissemination like the vilification of Rhea Chakraborty in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. News channels have polarised us and are bringing out our basest instincts.

Whatever has happened to neutral news reporting? Why do we not trust any one of these channels? How and why did they deteriorate so much? How did we degenerate to shrill debates with anchors out-shouting panelists and guests? Why is reporting not a coveted job anymore?

Those of us who grew up with the Doordarshan can remember the English News at 10.pm. Komal GB Singh, Minu Talwar, Rini Simon Khanna, Prannoy Roy, and many others delivered the news with poise, perfect diction, and a poker face. They could give any foreign news anchors a run for their money.

These days news channels seem to be promoting their own narrative and the debates are farcical. Get six so-called experts and give them two seconds of airtime where they compete to see who has the highest decibel levels to put their point across.

It is hard to believe that Indians do not have the taste or appreciation for better news reporting.

I had read about this on a podcast and a news article by Ashok Malik for the Hindustan Times here is what I learned.

This is what happened.

In the 1990’s India got Cable television. I remember how eagerly we had awaited the launch of ZEE. With this came in the monopoly and thuggery of cable operators. As Indians got addicted to cable, the local operators who typically were the local goondas took control.

The Government instead of curbing the local Mafia and restoring law and order decided that they will do a top-down approach by putting a price cap on what channels can charge the viewer so that they are not scammed.

The TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) keeps tweaking it and makes changes to what it believes protects the interests of the consumers and are not looted. Read about it here..

The business model of a TV Channel instantly changed from a subscriber-based model to an advertiser based model.

While the intentions of the price caps were noble, the consequences of that are that news reporting in India is bordering on the ridiculous. The Sushant Singh Rajput case has become a drug case and caste case of a Bihari being murdered as a talking point for Bihar elections. And the viewer laps it at first and then gets bewildered by it and then starts doubting his own sanity.

An entertainment channel could be telecasting old episodes of the Ramayana & Mahabharata and their viewership can quadruple. At zero cost. They could show reruns of old soaps, movies whose rights they have bought and relax.

The news channels have no such luxury. They have to produce fresh content 24/7. With a limited budget, they try to grab as many eyeballs as they can with their sensational headlines and shouting matches. Their job is not to give you news but to get you not to flip the channel. And the cheapest way is to horrify you and appeal to your basest instincts.

In the US, News Channels get 70% of their revenues from subscriptions, in India, it is 10%. Add to that the pressure of continuous producing of fresh content.

The latest TRP (Television Reporting Points) scam should not come as a surprise. TRP’s decide which channel has the highest viewership, which decides the advertising spend, which in turn decides the revenue.

The incentive to cheat is right there.

The option to charge higher and allow for subscriber-based news channels for a discerning viewer is just not there, so we don’t know if this is actually what the viewer wants or are they willing to pay more for it.

That is why independent You tubers like Dhruv Rathee or Faye Dsouza are gaining viewership. But they cannot have the infrastructure of reporting on every news item on a continuous basis. They at best take up a few topical matters, report independently with the limited resources that they have.

As they scale up, they will also depend on paid subscriptions and or donations and they may face the same challenge as the news channel to retain quality.

For entertainment and even documentaries, the new interesting content is being aired by the OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Recently I enjoyed a wonderful short Tamil film,Putham Pudu Kalaai on Amazon Prime.

These platforms are dependent on subscribers and some on advertisement but the original content they are producing out from India is phenomenal. They probably are long-term greedy and have the wherewithal to keep funding but the very fact that they are betting on regional Indian content proves that there is a need for niche quality content.

The government had good intentions in capping the price of the TV channels but if there is no business model to be made out of it crap will be dished out and fed to the viewers indefinitely.

They could very well course correct and make it viable for some good quality content on TV channels to be aired.

Or as some Corporate Houses have recently displayed some spine and blacklisted channels which spew hate may force them to mend their ways.