In other news

Where, like some in the BJP I will pretend that Varun Gandhi did not shoot his mouth off like a 'psychopath' (in the words of one senior leader) - well Varun Gandhi does have a crazy gene set, so why was I not surprised. That said, as one person told me recently, this sort of vitriol comes from personal hurt and/or anger - a grievance against someone which manifests itself as anger against the community.
You know Hitler started this way, though I will not call VG close to being Hitler. But the kid, and he is a kid, should have known better than to shoot his mouth off - every fourth person in India owns a mobile with a videography device. This will be India's first sort-of internet election - broadband numbers have swelled since 2004 and shit like this will swim back and forth over fibre-optic cables. Well, I do have better things to download though. Of course, the media, at least the poorer bits of the English media will climb all over this and tactfully ignore the vitriol that gets preached every Friday and try to bully the majority into a sense of guilt. Instead of leaving the matter to the EC where it should be acted on. And it is being acted on.
But VG is the son of the man who did come very close to being India's 'Dear Leader'. Instead we will probably get his cousin Rahul Baba who will take world leaders in cowsheds in Amethi, tell them that they're in 'Real India', so that like with David Milliband - and while it feels painful to talk like this about an Arsenal supporter - is a complete twat. Next time, Rahul Baba, keep them in the cowshed - or keep them away from toilet paper for a day or so.
Anyway, the news I wanted to get to was UndieTV's extraordinary bid for the IPL rights.
Now, the background to the case is simple. BCCI/IPL issued a termination letter to WSG India which owned the broadcast rights for IPL and had sub-leased them to Sony. Sony rushed to the Bombay High Court, which has reserved its judgement. Now WSG Mauritius gave the IPL 30% more dosh for the telly rights - believed to be around $1.3 billion. OK, doesn't make sense at all, but makes even less sense when you consider that the 'samdhi' of a very rich Indian politician (who aspires to be PM) is a part-owner of SET. The SET fiasco has been going on for a while, the stopping of AXN a few years ago, makes a lot more sense now. This is a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Back to the story, now before SET could go to court, WSG Mauritius called for telecast bids. Now it appears that UndieTV has bid $1.45 billion for the rights to broadcast the IPL. The irony of the bid doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the company is broke, the money for the bid is not coming from India. But this is a company, at least a sister company of a channel which chopped salaries 20% last week. Not as bad as the salary cuts at Bennett, which are in the 30% range, but more on that fiasco later.
Will UndieTV broadcast the IPL? Will cricket save the News? Will the cricket happen in the first place? Keep watching for more.

Grouses...

ESPN-Star certainly seems to have one with the BCCI (whose website redirects to TicketPro India, the world's most powerful board does not have a website yet!), their coverage of all things BCCI almost invariably is critical of the world's favourite cricket board, home of illicitly rich men and coke snorting playboys. Have you seen Sportscenter India lately? Almost every cricket story involving the BCCI is so heavily editorialised, it is not funny. I know that ESPN-Star isn't quite what you would call a 'news' channel but Sportscenter is a news show. It is not a daily highlight reel, at least the Indian edition isn't.
Technically are sports channels allowed to broadcast 'news'? I mean with the 26 per cent rule and all? FM Radio still can't broadcast any sort of news. Then again, with news channels essentially being General Entertainment Channels, who knows what is what?

How to save face!

The funny thing with having a competitive news industry is that sometimes stories that appear in rival publications or television channels are almost drowned out. Unless of course the break is too big to ignore, when most rival papers just shrug and start follow-up reporting. Like this break by the Times of India yesterday. This story deserved to be a flyer and yesterday every TV channel was agog with the news, and Priyanka even went on record saying she 'did visit' Nalini in jail. So therefore this headline in The People's Daily of Chennai was bewildering. Personally, I thought it stank of sour grapes, but this headline implies that the 'First Daughter' of the country is a liar. The body copy is more rational, but the headline is worse. But then again, this is the People's Daily which insists that the Dalai Lama clique is guilty of terrorism and that we should play softy-softy with the Naxals. But of course, there is this Sunday ET headline which contradicts itself - growing during a recession? Aren't growth and recession mutually exclusive - this is economics no?
There has been a long and interesting history of how to save face when you miss a story and your editor calls you in to explain. There is the patented ToI/ET method, which I remember was told to me many years ago by a women who was then in ET - "If it has not appeared in ET, it isn't news", in response to why she lifted a story I had done for HT a month ago. Thankfully, said reporter isn't in ET anymore. There is the 'HT method' which is to deny everything that appeared in the Times, no matter how stupid you look - therefore when the Times questioned why Delhi's legislators were so lazy and got into trouble for printing public statistics because said lazy legislators did not like being called lazy, HT gleefully reported that the Times was hauled up. Of course, this is the same paper that until yesterday pretty much defended the insane BRT corridor (and if it wasn't for Delhi's Chief Secretary realising the chaos the BRT has led to, would have continued to defend it). And now we have the afore-mentioned method in The Hindu, which today according to a story in Mint are so scared of Times that they want to raise money by selling a small stake to Fairfax of Australia - the guys who run the Sydney Morning Herald among other papers.
In other news, we finally have the first edition of The Financial Chronicle - or at least a e-Paper since there might not be a Delhi edition for a while. Yes, and you have to login for the service, so I really don't care to read much beyond looking at the front page. The IPL fiasco has become more interesting, firstly with Lalit Modi being forced to back down by the newspapers, which has made the broadcasters who agreed to many of the terms upset - so now they are threatening to boycott the IPL, poor guys!I think the BCCI which can take on the ICC, Cricket Australia and the ECB has met its match with the Indian media. Anyway, come what may, I'll be in the clubhouse at Kotla on saturday to see the Delhi Daredevils take on the Rajasthan Royals (McGrath vs Warne!), so if any of you are coming there, I'll see you there.
And finally NewsX, I watched it for a while yesterday, and yes while the anchors might have English issues and some of them overcompensate by putting on fake accents, this is not a problem restricted to this channel - after all nobody can understand some anchors at Headlines Today (even in real life) and some achors at Undie and Rajdeep TV have 'issues' to put it bluntly. Liked the fact that the layout was clean, the anchorettes looked good and there were no talking head shows. I mean not that one would liked to see 'The Champagne Bathtub Chronicles' (Which led me to an interesting question, how many Champagne Baths would Rs 7.96 crore buy?), but so far so good. Not that I'm going to watch much. And I have one question for CNBC TV18, do they have a features anchor/reporter other than Shereen? Really, I think the poor girl is going to die soon with her workload!