Interesting

This news item seems interesting, in fact it is really quite interesting given dynamics in business television and dailies with the entry of ET Now in a few weeks (months?). While the valuation demands are a bit on the insane side, The Economic Times still breaks a lot of stories and ET Now will be seen as major competition to CNBC-TV18.
At the end of the day, according to ratings, and ratings do matter no matter what people say about 'prestige' and all, Times Now is the leading English news channel in India. They have in a few years pretty much overhauled more established channels with more experienced reporters. That is not to say that there are no issues there, but they've done it and one reason was that CNN-IBN and NDTV concentrated far too much on each other allowing these guys to quietly storm past. Now, with CNBC-TV18 taking ET Now's threat a lot more seriously and the fact that when it coimes to 'first' at least with post-result interviews, CNBC is a tough act to beat, it should be interesting. The only problem is the timing and the slippage of the launch date.
The tie-up also will serve Mint in good stead hopefully given that their news reportage has been slipping of late, in fact in certain beats they seem to be almost non-existant. I do not know what an 'editorial and marketing' deal entails, but given CNN-IBN's and Hindustan Times' closeness (the two organisations constantly co-operate on things like 'Indian of the Year', all sorts of Polls - expect a pro-Congress opinion poll shortly, and I don't know that there is a poll but if there is it has to be pro-Congress) this deal is not surprising. It seems the best way to deal with the Times of India Group behemoth is to tie-up. Or let the giant trip itself up, which it seems the rather controversial Private Treaties organisation seems to have done. After all the hullaballo of a year ago, the silence now speaks volumes.

In the name of Fair and Balanced

Just to prove that I'm not Fox News - Barkha gave an interview to Mint earlier today and I disagree with the main thread, the media is the fourth estate and like any other 'estate' int is fallible and it is answerable to those who watch and read it. Targeting the media is being done by whom right now? The public, and Ms. Dutt they have the right to target you as much as they have the right to target me. You are a higher profile journalist and therefore get more criticism than most, but to argue that you (or 'the media' at large) doesn't deserve criticism is juvenile. Barkha has also written a massively long monologue on the NDTV website, best of luck if you can finish reading it, but still did not answer a few questions about her coverage, but anyway... Actually I'm hungry right now and need something to eat.
PS: NDTV's stock is one of the highest climbers on the NSE today, climbing 28.3% - it is still trading at under a quarter of its peak value, but something is cooking. Is there actually a deal in place to dispose of the Entertainment business or was HT's defence of NDTV a sign that something really spicy is cooking there. Bad move for both if you ask me personally from an editorial point of view (not just given the links with CNN-IBN) but strategically it does make sense - print needs TV and TV needs print and dot-coms suck any which way. That said, seeing more junk from NDTV Profit in Mint would be sad!

EDIT: Some of the posts on the aforementioned Facebook group wall make for bad reading for UndieTV. Actually, I would be worried that this group is getting larger and larger and people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the channel are joining up. As someone I know told me just now about my epithet for the channel - 'Is barr toh chaddi utar gayi!'

Don't get me wrong by the way, I am not some right-wing loony railing against NDTV. One of my dearest friends is a senior reporter there and I dispassionately believe that he is one of the best reporters in what he covers. There are several brilliant reporters and journalists who work in that organisation. But, anger, and particularly this sort of post-mortem anger comes for a reason and that is the reason I'm banging away about the profession needing to take last week's event as an excuse for some serious introspection. And that could start by NDTV stopping to 'censor' comments on Barkha's reply immaturely. Listen, I put a hell of a lot of comments that are rather rude to me up here. It is called taking the rough with the smooth, maybe taking things with a more rational bent would do you guys some good.

And while I won't link back lest I reveal my identity, but a shout-out to RS! Thanks, but do I really rant that much?

Poison

I took my mother's car to work today and suddenly discovered that I had an old CD lying about in her car - Absolute Rock Ballads from 1999! So I travelled the entire way, including the insane traffic jam through GK thanks to Shiela aunty, listening to songs I had not heard in years. Poison, Extreme, Queen - this was like a bad retro festival. But strangely enough, it felt nice. Like comfort music, even.
About the BJP ban on CNN-IBN I happened to meet the closest thing that channel has to a chaddiwallah (who happens to be a close friend) at another friend's birthday party last night. He believes that the channel and the BJP will kiss and make up soon enough. Once Arun Jaitley calms down a bit. Surprisingly, Jaitley has been in a vicious mood of late. But, I am not that optimistic, while personal relationships in certain cases go beyond the channel, there are politicians in this country who nuture grudges. At least two people have told me that Raghav should pray that the NDA doesn't come into power in 2009.

Sorry

Haven't been in town for the last few days, as the picture indicates. I decided to let Jet Airways bounce me through the clouds and despite flying one hell of a lot, the return flight was possibly one of the most unnerving flights I have ever taken. I came back on Saturday to watch Rajdeep hollering on TV - talking about the Talwar's suing the Hindi news channels and all. I don't know why, and political opinions I really respect Rajdeep as a journalist, why does he sound so frantic and ear-splitting irritating even when he makes sense. With him on the air, particularly hosting a discussion show, you have to keep changing the volume - 02 when Rajdeep is speaking and 25 for everyone else (on a scale of 50, which is what is there on a Samsung).

Anyway, Rajesh Talwar is a free man, the UP Police have been shown up, and it kind of scares you about the UP Police. The Talwar's have through the case, been going directly to the top of various media organisations much to the chagrin of field reporters. But, field reporters usually report the word of the police as the gospel truth - 'we think he is guilty, therefore he is'. Now, the english media managed to moderate themselves to an extent, though the tabloids were a bit off the mark sometimes. I believe there needs to be a level of moderation to coverage of murder cases, the media should not get ahead of itself and unless they find a way to self regulate through the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) I presume someone will hoist the rules on them. Another thing is that reporters should start question their 'sources' instead of dealing with them as the complete truth. I shudder to think what would have happened to Dr. Talwar had the Talwar's not had the connections to do what they did.

Anyway, thankfully, its all over now. Or is it.

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!

More mobile stories.

When you sit and end up discussing technology with friends, those conversations can go late into the night, discussing the rights and wrongs of what havoc the spread of information is wreaking on our pulpy brains. However, and I have to really admit my father was prescient about this, the spread of camera enabled mobile phones has revolutionised the way Indians treat pornography. Heck, it has encouraged an entire generation of peeping-Toms, and one could argue that worse, it has encouraged an entire generation of people to take their clothes off in front of the camera. Some of the videos that are being shot and floating around the internet are what my old driver would have called 'chicken tikka ke andar ka masala'. I never did figure that out!
Anyway, why am I mentioning this? Well, in the past two years at least two anchorettes have been 'caught' on mobile camera. One was an anchor for a south Indian channel, the second an anchor at a Noida based Hindi channel ostensibly owned by a political party. Unsurprisingly, when the latter quit to join another organisation she was horrified that almost everybody had seen that clip. But now, thanks to the exploits of an anchor in a Delhi-based Hindi channel on a network better known for its English channel has been caught posing, pretty much letting everything hang (this was no 'secretly filmed' video). This is a channel famous for the fact that almost every woman who makes it big there has to (and I quote a friend here) 'Do the boss' (of the channel). What is even more surprising is that on the other front, this channel has a strict policy in place, but that seemingly doesn't apply to the vernacular.
I mean members of the looney right go around beating up priests and attacking art exhibitions, but at one level I think that they're losing the fight to impose their perverse sense of morality on us. I mean, when it comes to their version of morals, extreme-Hindu's and extreme-Muslim's show an uncanny bonding and even attend protest rallies together, even though otherwise they would have no qualms about killing each other. Again, I would like to clarify that I am not passing moral judgement on the topic, go ahead shoot videos (as long as both parties are consenting) and go ahead post it online - trust me, short of some of the new Nokia N-Series devices which are sweet handsets, few other handsets can really resolve images, let alone videos very clearly.
Really people, this is not good porn, even when it comes to homemade amateur porn, man I could have done a degree on the subject when I was still in college. And anyway, when it comes to Porn, nobody, nobody, comes as close to insanity as the Japanese. Hey, I still read anime, and even the watered down (you know the ones where they skip the part about tentacle monsters) comics make me gag at times.
Anyway, on another note, back to important things in the media. A lot of people are currently leaving CNN-IBN to join INX, from reports, INX is poaching technical people by the bushel and deskies are running away, frustrated that their stories are reported by good-looking but air-headed dumbats. However, after seeing the first show of 'A Matter of Taste', I can pretty much assure you that 'The V' is not Tony Bourdain or even close to Keith Floyd. Listen, I watch a lot of T&L, and I can guarantee that the food show that Padma Laxmi hosted on India was much better. Whats with those 'pregnant pauses' while chewing.
Oh, and I have come to the conclusion that journalists who do not do their homework should be, well, shot, but since that would kill off half of UndieProfit, we can't exactly do that can we?

No CNN-IBN on Tata-Sky.

I've written about this before, but now there is a major twist to the tale - the forthcoming Initial Public Offering of Global Broadcast News (GBN). Whats the twist? Simple. Simple emperical evidence shows that Tata-Sky has been a major winner in the Direct-To-Home (DTH) battle after Conditional-Access Systems (CAS) was implemented in large swathes of the four metropolitan areas - this is despite Tata-Sky having two major content issues. Other than CNN-IBN (or RajdeepTV, as I prefer to call it) there is no SunTV, but part of that has to do with the Maran family's own plan to launch a DTH service a bit later this year - and with one brother heading up the Telecom Ministry, I wonder if TRAI will issue an order forcing SunTV to give Tata-Sky feed. Anyway, back to the point, I've always said that Tata-Sky has by far and away the superior interface and lately you have the peculiar situation of one Zee arm - GalaxZee saying that DTH is bad while another - DishTV says DTH is good - one reason why getting into a service offered by Subhash Chandra is bit dubious. Somehow, you know that RNT and Rupert Murdoch will offer a decent service and Temasek never invests crazily.
Back to the story, DTH is a fairly expensive service at least in terms of initial cost - so you can assume that people who have been installing DTH (take a look at rooftops in South Delhi and South Bombay homes). Now this, is prime-English speaking (SEC A+, actually this would be SEC A+++ if there was such a category) territory - which means this is prime CNN-IBN territory. As it is you don't get CNN-IBN on the free feed, and you also don't get it on the DTH service which has been the clear winner in the CAS brouhaha. Now, if GBN has an IPO, and it is planning one fairly soon, and the service isn't availble in prime markets - keep in mind, English News channels command decent ad-rates (better than all but the highest viewed Hindi channels) simply because of their viewer profile, even if they output utter tripe.
As a GBN shareholder, wouldn't you be concerned that the flagship channel isn't available in lots of homes? Think about it - GBN will have a fairly hefty (though not as ridiculous as Cairn or as ridiculous as DLF is expected to be) priceband. I'm also fairly sure that it will be oversubscribed, but until they get onboard Tata-Sky, they have trouble ahead. Now, what is peculiar is that the other TV-18 channels are on Tata-Sky, but CNN-IBN isn't. The conspiracy theory goes that keeping Rajdeep off Tata-Sky is UndieTV's revenge. But, that is just the conspiracy theory.