If television was to become the key to enlightenment for the next generation, that generation I am sorry to say would be quite dumb. The idiot box synonym for television seems truer than ever before and news channels in India symbolize this the best.
According to a 2008 FICCI report, “The current size of the television industry is estimated at Rs 226 billion, with a projected figure of Rs 600 billion by 2012. The growth rate in 2007 over last year is 18%, while the CAGR is estimated at 22% from 2008-12.” Everyone has been eyeing for a pie of this huge chunk leading to a mad scramble.
Massive growth in ownership of television sets and vast spread of cable networks led to impressive rise in the number of viewers – there are roughly 110 million homes with television in India, up from 88 million in 2000. Out of this about 80 million homes are connected with cables. At an average of 5 persons per household, the total viewers are an impressive 500 million plus. This provided a huge commercial opportunity to a new fledgling industry.

But despite all these, news and commercial television in India is relatively still young but its juvenile character has not much to do with its youth. It rather hinges on the milieu in which is has taken shape, the context of globalisation and the compelling compulsions of media economics. Little surprise a two-hour browse of some news channels can leave you exasperated, if you were looking to find some news in it. Today news channels show everything other than news — astrology, Bollywood, crime, travel shows, horror shows and celebrations of celebrities. For many channels, content has been reduced to the 4 C matrix of crime, cricket, cinema and celebrities.

Indian television drama

Television is drama par excellence and in the last one year, the major events that one has witnessed include the 60-feet-fall of Prince, kissing escapades of starlets Rakhi Sawant and Shilpa Shetty, series of sting operations, insensitive portrayals of biologically deformed children and twins, might of Khali, ghosts haunting people and houses, occult and mystic tales, soothsayers’ predictions and so on.

From a purist’s perspective all this imply degeneration in television content, for news has certain ethics and sanctity which seems to have been massively compromised. Drama has replaced serious discourse and news has been buried deep inside the trivial and tantalizing.

The biggest headache for launching a satellite channel is programming software for round the clock broadcast. For this, newsgathering is a major task for the 24-hour news channels. To cater to this task, the emerging electronic channels have tried to make an attempt to cover all the incidents irrespective of position, location and time. These channels have not only revolutionized the concept of news on Indian television but also changed the news format. Before 1990s, Doordarshan had total monopoly on news on Indian television but they had also turned the news programs into a dull and boring exercise. Now the private channels have made the news into a glamour product. On the positive side, the strong point of all news bulletins today is their topicality, objectivity, glossy editing and high-quality visuals. News has traveled a long way from the DD era. From Local events to International events, breaking news to news analysis, television soap to page3 news, every happening comes under purview of news.

Doordarshan presented the news in a very politically correct manner. All controversial issues were pushed under the carpet. The ruling government had a strong hold on television broadcasting. Doordarshan news bulletins were unable to provide much international news to the national viewers. Objectivity had been the first casualty as news was invariably slanted to suit the party in power. The news was liberated from the confines of the DD newsroom and gained in objectivity and credibility when New Delhi Television (NDTV) produced ‘The World This Week’ in 1988.
In 1989, it also produced India’s first live televised coverage of the country’s general elections. The critical and commercial success of the coverage set a new standard for Indian television. And after the Gulf War the media panorama changed forever.
This is the period when satellite channels concentrated on entertainment programmes for their respective channels. Doordarshan still ruled the most coveted area ‘news’.
But Doordarshan’s monopoly was broken in 1992, when private television channels infiltrated into the Indian boundaries. In the beginning of 1990s, the private channels offered only entertainment programmes.

Doordarshan had faced stiff competition in news and public affairs programming with international channels like BBC and CNN. In February 1995, NDTV became the country’s first private producer of the national news ‘News Tonight’, setting a new landmark for Indian television because of its on-the-spot reporting with pertinent visuals. In the same year, TV Today Network occupied a 20 minutes slot on DD Metro channel and aired a Hindi and current affairs programme ‘Aaj Tak’.

But keeping the demand of infotainment programmes in mind, the media houses started to produce news magazines, entertainment magazines and news programmes for different channels.
And now, news channels are booming with sky being the limit. That day is not far away, when we will get a satellite news channel for every major city in India. Now news is not restricted to political happenings. Anything, which is strange or disgusting, is news. There are no rigid rules, which define news.
So, what exactly is the definition of news? According to the Webster dictionary, the classical meaning of news is :
a. A report of recent events, b. previously unknown information, c. something having a specified influence or effect
b. A material reported in a newspaper or news periodical or on a newscast , b. matter that is newsworthy.
In an amazing disclosure, QW Naqvi, News Director of Aaj Tak said that in today’s scenario, the ambit of news has expanded. Thus, the definition of news is actually determined by the viewers, and the news channels have to decode this and provide news accordingly.
LN Goel, Director & Vice Chairman of Zee Group says, “Since news does not consist only of information and happenings, content is a bigger set of this subset. It also constitutes views, discussions, initiative surveys, debates, investigations etc. So content has all these elements and since news is not only confined to political happenings, content also has entertainment, sports, religion etc in its fold”.
Here lies the problem: all news channels’ TRPs are rated together. As a result, channels sticking to a healthy news format are bracketed with those who indulge in sensation, and manage to garner higher TRPs, thanks to higher viewership. As a result ads and revenues are lost to other serious news channels, leaving them unable to compete. Thus, even if they don’t wish to, they have to join the sensational bandwagon forming a vicious cycle.
To compete with entertainment and sports channels, many news channels have increased their quota of cricket, cinema and crime to an extent that more than two thirds of their content is based on these three components.
Channels, and especially Hindi news players have also started to innovate and experiment. They started to look for inclusion of non-news elements in order to broaden their reach and appeal. There was the consideration that if there are six members in a typical family between the age group of 6 to 60, they all needed to be tapped. Cinema and cricket were the first imports given their long affiliations with the Indian psyche. Information and gossip from Bollywood started to hog the prime slots of news channels and everything, from a torn ligament of an Indian actress to the kissing escapades of an item girl, began getting minute attention. Crime was the next big thing on news channels and its presentation was wrapped with drama of such high intensity that it could give even the worst commercial producers of Bollywood a run for their money. All this was happening in the name of audience demand. News was fast losing its sheen.

This was not the end. Soon more experiments followed. Micro issues of family and even individuals started to dominate news space. Marital disputes, for instance, were brought to the fore and husbands and wives were made to sit for hours in studios talking about their problems. News channels suddenly turned into arbitrators and dabbled into issues such as adoption and extra marital affairs and even the dispute between a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law. All this was justified in the name of an activist media, which was out there to resolve personal disputes and moral dilemmas. This was still not the end.

The next trend was endless portrayal of ghost stories and tantriks (black magic). Stories of how ghosts haunt a house in Bihar or how a small child of a snake-charmer played with a snake in Tamil Nadu were narrated with utmost sincerity in the name of news, and for hours together. News was getting fast replaced with the trivial and mundane.

And when a six-year-old boy Prince fell down in a 60-feet pit a village in UP, news channels went berserk. For two days, most of the news channels beamed live pictures from ground zero, tracking every moment of the “Breaking News” till the child was rescued by personnel of the Indian army. News television had turned into saviours as well.

Experiments went unabated. What followed next was a spate of sting operations in a bid to expose corruption in many places. And alas, in their zest to present their audience with the most sensational and curious, they brought notoriety and disrepute to television. Little surprise the Government of India in a historic and bold move imposed a ban of one month on a Hindi news channel which had falsely implicated a Delhi-based government school teacher and portrayed her as someone who was forcing her school girls into prostitution. News was getting bizarre and intolerable.

As if all this was not enough, now channels have taken upon themselves to aid the police in cracking murder cases. News channels went crazy talking about the recent double murder in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, of a 14-year-old girl and her domestic help, allegedly committed by her father. It was a gruesome incident alright and police was baffled as much as the general public about the nitty gritty of the case. News channels baffled them further by turning into detectives The funny sight of journalists, posing as amateur detectives dissecting the case and the numerous posers put to the police made a mockery of news besides botching up the case further and putting the Police under unnecessary media pressure. The audience was left gasping. Where has news disappeared? Trivilisation of television news today seems complete and hitting a point of no return.

Where does it go from here? If the marketeers’ perspectives are to be believed, and it would be unfair if we did not consider these, the trend is likely to get further accentuated in the months to come.

According to media analyst, News channels should hot have any ratings. The strength and perceived credibility of a news channel will become its brand equity.
According to the CMS Media Lab, the time spent on political news in the year 2007 has come down by more than 50 per cent. Political news coverage by Hindi news channels has dipped from 23.1 per cent in 2005 to 10.09 per cent in 2007.
On the other hand, sports, entertainment, crime and human interest news have managed to almost double up from 27.9 per cent in 2005 to 53.1 per cent in 2007. At the same time, agriculture, education, health and environment-related news have not seen any net change; their coverage has been as insignificant in 2007 as earlier.
Besides, the entertainment industry has grown tremendously, and they have realised the power of news channels. They are marketing their products through news channels, and all the big films have them as media partners.
News broadcasters also feel that serious stories without any element of drama have a short life in the Hindi news space. In all this soap box entertainment, the real issues effecting 80% of our population of course takes a back seat.
This progressive shrinkage in News Channels’ coverage on social and developmental issues reflects media’s growing apathy to these vital concerns, which in turn prevents these issues from getting their due attention from the public, government, policy makers and other stakeholders.

The News Broadcasters Association (NBA) has issued a missive to all bordcasters, in which it broadly explains the code of ethics and broadcasting standards for Television news channels. The missive also covers the fundamental principles and the principles of self regulation as part of the code. Fundamental principles state news should not be selected on the basis of promoting or hindering either side of any controversial public issue. It also states that news shall not promote or be designed on beliefs, opinions or desires of interested parties.

Truth will be a defence in all cases where a larger public interest is involved, and in even these cases, equal opportunities will be provided for individuals involved to present their point of view.

Under the clause of sting operations, the code says that News channels should not allow sex and sleaze as a means to carry out sting operations. It further states that sting operations should only be carried out as a tool for getting conclusive evidence of wrong doing or criminality and that there is no deliberate alteration of visuals, or editing or interposing done with the raw footage in a way that it also alters or misrepresents that truth or presents only a portion of the truth.

If not then television will become what an American actor and comedian Groucho Marx once said, “I find television very educational. Every time someone turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”