If The Indian Express (where in something that would have made Ponytail proud, journalism awards were given to the son-in-law, anyone surprised?) is changing its spots so dramatically, can a change of government be in the offing? The Q leak, though symptomatic of the way the UPA regime has used the CBI for its own odds and ends (much like the NDA also did) is rumored to be followed up by other large exposes before the fourth round on May 7. I wonder how quickly RajdeepTV starts changing their stance as well - ET carried a decent story today on how bureaucrats are trying to save their skins as happened during polling in 2004 (and given that the ToI and ET sites are run by Indiatimes a completely schizo web company you can't find the article).
The other really funny thing is that the 'psychopath's' antics in Pilibhit seem to have worked - confused identity and the BJP's own problems with his father (and the Emergency) be damned. BCCL of course, always goes where the wind blows - I think there is a Mr. Big song of the same name - this eighties and nineties music thing is getting a bit much - have Sweet Child O' Mine playing right now while also trying to watch the two worst teams in the IPL go at each other. What will happen to the news organisations that find themselves tied to the Congress thanks to reasons of ownership or otherwise? Well, the Congress-owned paper won't be making ministers of it anytime soon, and after the funny accusation of calling Advani a mask for Modi - funny because everybody has known that fact for a while, much like MMS is a cover for Rahulbaba. Seriously, expecting either Advani or MMS to last out till 2014 is asking for far too much. Call a spade a spade, but do it fairly.
That said, I still believe that 1992, 2002 and IC-814 will be problems for the BJP going forward not just the 'Hindu' agenda forwarded by Togadia and Muthalik. Ditching the ugly side is important. Nothing wrong in nationalism, nothing wrong in demanding and creating a stronger India. But the past has a bad habit of appearing at all the wrong times. Shit happened, shit hit the fan, if you don't clean all the shit quickly, you can still fall ill after several years.
It seems the Bevdaas have beaten Dildo's team. Remind me to send Nokia's marketing guys a 'told you so' note!
Showing posts with label IPL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IPL. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Def Leppard
No, the title is not supposed to make sense, the shuffle mode, and yes it is on shuffle, of the Nokia 5800 I'm using has suddenly decided that I need a massive dose of Def Leppard - era no bar. So I've had crazy early eighties Brit Pop - to the golden oldies from Hysteria and Adrenalize - two albums I genuinely liked when I was in school. Heck, I think I even became good at carving the pointy Def Leppard logo onto several school desks. Def Lep and Metallica to be honest.
But then again, since according to several of the people who read this blog I represent this blog, I symbolise all that is wrong with the 'elite', my music choices represent my 'moral corruption'. Would you believe it if I told I even liked Michael Jackson and some ALW musicals back then. Cool, since I've just got a new iPod Shuffle to try out and finally plan to load four gigs exclusively of rock from the eighties and nineties. No new age Brandon Flowers lyrical murder on this iPod (OK, I've lost count now), even though I like The Killers honestly. And Kings of Leon and well, I like a lot of new stuff. But if you are like me, in your late twenties or early thiries, the last generation of Indians who grew up knowing that there was TV, though only one-channel TV with Chitrahaar being family bonding time, and when mastering the air guitar became a rite of passage to go to Class VIII.
Anyway, all this misses the point of the Monday rant one of them being - if you don't know how Google Adsense or Adwords works stop leaving stupid comments. Thanks. And also I must add that with the elections and the IPL (and as the media grows a spine - even the genocide in Sri Lanka, though India's seemingly tacit approval of this is because I guess Madamji wants her husband's murderer dead before she loses power), Feroz Khan's death did not get enough air-play. No really. During my stint in Bombay I had the fortune (well, depends on which way you look at it) to bump into the man on a few occasions. Pity, he was a lot of things, much of that can't be written here, but also a fun guy to hang with. If you had similar interests.
PS: Wandering into The Chambers every once in a while is good fun. Just to see what is going on at other tables.
But then again, since according to several of the people who read this blog I represent this blog, I symbolise all that is wrong with the 'elite', my music choices represent my 'moral corruption'. Would you believe it if I told I even liked Michael Jackson and some ALW musicals back then. Cool, since I've just got a new iPod Shuffle to try out and finally plan to load four gigs exclusively of rock from the eighties and nineties. No new age Brandon Flowers lyrical murder on this iPod (OK, I've lost count now), even though I like The Killers honestly. And Kings of Leon and well, I like a lot of new stuff. But if you are like me, in your late twenties or early thiries, the last generation of Indians who grew up knowing that there was TV, though only one-channel TV with Chitrahaar being family bonding time, and when mastering the air guitar became a rite of passage to go to Class VIII.
Anyway, all this misses the point of the Monday rant one of them being - if you don't know how Google Adsense or Adwords works stop leaving stupid comments. Thanks. And also I must add that with the elections and the IPL (and as the media grows a spine - even the genocide in Sri Lanka, though India's seemingly tacit approval of this is because I guess Madamji wants her husband's murderer dead before she loses power), Feroz Khan's death did not get enough air-play. No really. During my stint in Bombay I had the fortune (well, depends on which way you look at it) to bump into the man on a few occasions. Pity, he was a lot of things, much of that can't be written here, but also a fun guy to hang with. If you had similar interests.
PS: Wandering into The Chambers every once in a while is good fun. Just to see what is going on at other tables.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Random IPL Rant
Just thought that I would climb on the IPL bandwagon as well. You know, it is the same crazy logic I had when I started smoking - everyone is doing it! By the way, if Ramadoss freaked out about smoking in movies (particularly SRK in Devdas), I wonder what he would say about Abhay Deol's extreme substance abuse in Dev. D? Smoke for thought...
Here is the funny thing, I never thought that the news channels would give the IPL so much support. When Chidambaram started his disasterous attempt to dovetail the Gujarat riots into the IPL yesterday he got a lot of flak from journalists.
And the flak seems to have been counter-productive, Arun Jaitley who was for several days behaving like a petulant schoolboy stirred. You can say a lot of things about Jaitley, but not about cricket. Despite the chaos that rules the DDCA – Delhi today has three permanent members of the Test team and when Virat Kohli makes it there, which hopefully should be sooner rather than later given the kid’s stunning form this domestic season – Delhi players will dominate the Indian team.
Not a Bombay-esque domination that happened in the 60’s and 70’s and that started the quota system, but domination nonetheless. And Jaitley has had a role to play, maybe not training wise but definitely a political role in getting these Delhi boys into the team (and Sehwag and Gambhir have spoken about this in the past, Sehwag even got married at Jaitley's house - love him or hate him, without Jaitley India might not have the best opening partnership in the world right now), and as events of the past few weeks have brought out in the spotlight, cricket is political. Very political and it has been like that since Jagmohan Dalmiya came into the picture. As are other Indian sports, but that is another story. But to be fair, the increased politicisation of cricket has happily coinciced with the team doing a hell of a lot better but still.
Back to my convoluted logic on how the television channels dug their own grave supporting the IPL and making Chiddu look like a vindictive man, which he is, but that is a moot point. See, this is going to be a bad year for companies. We can all delude ourselves and pretend that things are going to improve soon or we could also delude ourselves into thinking that the bottom has fallen out. The only people journalists have actually succeeded in convincing that things are horrible are the guys who employ them and they have promptly cut salaries. In certain cases the owners were broke and in certain cases, not so broke (maybe even profitable) but the salary cuts might be hiding a deeper malaise which happened thanks to the shares for adverts business and the requirement to maintain a debt to equity ratio.
Now, as we all know the media in India is free. ‘Real’ prices of newspapers haven’t risen in years, almost all the money you pay to your newspaper-wallah goes to him. Now the same applies to telly channels. You don’t pay UndieTV for the privilege of watching them, heck people refuse to pay UndieTV for the privilege of watching their trying to be Good Times channel, which nowadays feels like watching a person in complete denial. Anyway, companies aren’t doing well. Usually because their managers screwed up and money laundering operations went awry because the bottom fell out of the Dubai Real Estate market as well. So that means smaller advertising budgets.
The no IPL brigade championed by Chiddu would have meant guys with ad budgets sanctioned would have been left with nowhere to advertise. Other than the news channels. Which would have meant that instead of a sponsored sixer or wicket, things like ‘This tantrum of Arnab is brought to you by XXXX or ‘This display of fake emotion by Barkha is sponsored by YYYY’. I mean we could have had something like that. Of course, both the people mentioned above don’t have a sense of humour, which is why they’ve been mentioned, but you get my point.
Now despite the IPL happening in South Africa, which will mean I will try my frikkin’ darndest to go snag an air ticket to watch some matches at least, the TV times remain the same. So we will not have to watch hysterical screaming, random editorialising or worst of all a litany of wrong facts every evening. Nope, I can watch Sehwag and Gambhir whack the ball every few days. Pity, I really did hope to watch a few games at Kotla.
But then again, as much as we love politics, we just love cricket more.
Here is the funny thing, I never thought that the news channels would give the IPL so much support. When Chidambaram started his disasterous attempt to dovetail the Gujarat riots into the IPL yesterday he got a lot of flak from journalists.
And the flak seems to have been counter-productive, Arun Jaitley who was for several days behaving like a petulant schoolboy stirred. You can say a lot of things about Jaitley, but not about cricket. Despite the chaos that rules the DDCA – Delhi today has three permanent members of the Test team and when Virat Kohli makes it there, which hopefully should be sooner rather than later given the kid’s stunning form this domestic season – Delhi players will dominate the Indian team.
Not a Bombay-esque domination that happened in the 60’s and 70’s and that started the quota system, but domination nonetheless. And Jaitley has had a role to play, maybe not training wise but definitely a political role in getting these Delhi boys into the team (and Sehwag and Gambhir have spoken about this in the past, Sehwag even got married at Jaitley's house - love him or hate him, without Jaitley India might not have the best opening partnership in the world right now), and as events of the past few weeks have brought out in the spotlight, cricket is political. Very political and it has been like that since Jagmohan Dalmiya came into the picture. As are other Indian sports, but that is another story. But to be fair, the increased politicisation of cricket has happily coinciced with the team doing a hell of a lot better but still.
Back to my convoluted logic on how the television channels dug their own grave supporting the IPL and making Chiddu look like a vindictive man, which he is, but that is a moot point. See, this is going to be a bad year for companies. We can all delude ourselves and pretend that things are going to improve soon or we could also delude ourselves into thinking that the bottom has fallen out. The only people journalists have actually succeeded in convincing that things are horrible are the guys who employ them and they have promptly cut salaries. In certain cases the owners were broke and in certain cases, not so broke (maybe even profitable) but the salary cuts might be hiding a deeper malaise which happened thanks to the shares for adverts business and the requirement to maintain a debt to equity ratio.
Now, as we all know the media in India is free. ‘Real’ prices of newspapers haven’t risen in years, almost all the money you pay to your newspaper-wallah goes to him. Now the same applies to telly channels. You don’t pay UndieTV for the privilege of watching them, heck people refuse to pay UndieTV for the privilege of watching their trying to be Good Times channel, which nowadays feels like watching a person in complete denial. Anyway, companies aren’t doing well. Usually because their managers screwed up and money laundering operations went awry because the bottom fell out of the Dubai Real Estate market as well. So that means smaller advertising budgets.
The no IPL brigade championed by Chiddu would have meant guys with ad budgets sanctioned would have been left with nowhere to advertise. Other than the news channels. Which would have meant that instead of a sponsored sixer or wicket, things like ‘This tantrum of Arnab is brought to you by XXXX or ‘This display of fake emotion by Barkha is sponsored by YYYY’. I mean we could have had something like that. Of course, both the people mentioned above don’t have a sense of humour, which is why they’ve been mentioned, but you get my point.
Now despite the IPL happening in South Africa, which will mean I will try my frikkin’ darndest to go snag an air ticket to watch some matches at least, the TV times remain the same. So we will not have to watch hysterical screaming, random editorialising or worst of all a litany of wrong facts every evening. Nope, I can watch Sehwag and Gambhir whack the ball every few days. Pity, I really did hope to watch a few games at Kotla.
But then again, as much as we love politics, we just love cricket more.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Best served cold?
I don't get the IPL connection in the story and let me assure you not too many people bought tickets to watch IPL games - at least I bought none, but still watched five of seven games in Delhi. And believe me, I was not alone. Anyway, this is a Sidewinder missile at 9X, makes for entertaining reading though. Won't get into the financial plans of General Entertainment Channels though, because I don't watch them and therefore have no frikkin' clue!
But to add to the point, the IPL is more than just ticket sales - I was told by an extremely reliable source, who cannot be named because of Ramadoss - that while the Royal Challengers Bangalore were godawful last year, sales of RC climbed some 30 per cent afterwards. C'mon even KKR dropped off after their amazing start, but because SRK managed to sell KKR as a Bong team rather than a 'Kolkata' team, it got the entire diaspora excited. Sales of other stuff certainly increased and the teams made money from selling lounges and general gobbledegook. But then again, in reality only Kolkata, Punjab and Rajasthan made any money last year. And while the first season was a ratings success and I'm sure that season 2 will be a ratings success, it remains to be seen if the IPL will make 'money'. Money does not guarantee success of more money - just look at Chelsea Football Club.
So how successful has the IPL really been? Maybe, we'll answer that once the elections are over. What will be really interesting this time is that the IPL and the General Elections, or least the campaigning will definitely coincide, and that should lead to interesting news bulletins. So for eight weeks, half the paper will be politics and half the paper cricket. But newspapers can still run larger editions, can you imagine the chaos in the news channels. Nobody will watch the news because everyone will be busy watching cricket. Dang, what an absolutely brilliant move by Lalit Modi!
But to add to the point, the IPL is more than just ticket sales - I was told by an extremely reliable source, who cannot be named because of Ramadoss - that while the Royal Challengers Bangalore were godawful last year, sales of RC climbed some 30 per cent afterwards. C'mon even KKR dropped off after their amazing start, but because SRK managed to sell KKR as a Bong team rather than a 'Kolkata' team, it got the entire diaspora excited. Sales of other stuff certainly increased and the teams made money from selling lounges and general gobbledegook. But then again, in reality only Kolkata, Punjab and Rajasthan made any money last year. And while the first season was a ratings success and I'm sure that season 2 will be a ratings success, it remains to be seen if the IPL will make 'money'. Money does not guarantee success of more money - just look at Chelsea Football Club.
So how successful has the IPL really been? Maybe, we'll answer that once the elections are over. What will be really interesting this time is that the IPL and the General Elections, or least the campaigning will definitely coincide, and that should lead to interesting news bulletins. So for eight weeks, half the paper will be politics and half the paper cricket. But newspapers can still run larger editions, can you imagine the chaos in the news channels. Nobody will watch the news because everyone will be busy watching cricket. Dang, what an absolutely brilliant move by Lalit Modi!
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Robot Chicken
I don't know about you but India ODI's are losing their watchability - we're pulverizing Sri Lanka. Last matchViru and Yuvi and this time Dhoni and Gauti (great to see both the Delhi boys do well though - Go Daredevils) Almost as badly as they're pulverizing their Tamilian citizens in the north.
Though their most famous Tamilian set another record today. We're treating their bowlers like their government treats their domestic press. I don't know about you, but cricket diplomacy as practiced by India is a bit strange - terminating the contracts of the Pakistani players even if they didn't do drugs. It will be sad to see Akmal and Tanvir go from Warne's team (they do have a loophole for those two and Misbah - but why Shilpa Shetty ugh!). Anyway, I spent a lot of time watching Robot Chicken of late and I'm pretty bugged that no network shows Adult Swim in India. Dang!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Fly Kingfisher drinking RC!
The honorary Doctor (and he who selects air-hostesses 'personally') contends that he would have bought MSD, Uthappa and McCullum instead of his 'fantastic' team (though with RD still being an icon player) but since the IPL has a 'salary cap' this year, he would have had to play with a team of four. Add up the salaries of these three players, plus the fact that RD would then be getting $1.8mln since MSD would be paid $1.6mln, and you would touch the $5mln limit. Of course, I get to hear from friends in Bangalore (many of whom now support the Shah Rukh - Akhtar show) that people are not pleased with the honorary Doctor bad-mouthing Bangalore's greatest son - RD. To be fair, if I were the hon. Doc I would be pissed too, but so are the owners of the Hyderbad team and they aren't throwing a hissy fit like a spoilt brat.
But then again, when your Formula 1 cars advertise your airline well by flying in the very first lap, what can you expect? Obviously look at the softer target, making sure the media ignores flying stunts. The hon. Doc wants to be a mid-field player in F1 soon, but with the teams back to base in Europe (showing their true pace) and Super Aguri out of the reckoning, the hon. Doc is sullying India's name (why Force India???) through the mud (with flying Fisi admitting as much), of course, Bangalore's rep is in the mud already. But then again with such god-awful uniforms what did you expect.
The flying fish - or Kingfisher's new jet?
Though, it appears that the hon. Doc will make sure the salary cap will be removed next year and he will go all guns blazing for some big names from the other teams, which means the IPL might actually become profitable for everyone else. Of course, for the poor shareholders of United Spirits however, it is a different matter.
Heck, even I'm drinking Carlsberg nowadays! I quit RC a long time ago, though Mallya still gains since the IPL is an even better surrogate ad for booze than the airline.
Monday, April 21, 2008
A conspiracy of silence
"Tui na, shob kichu tor bloge likhe deesh" - that is Bangla for "Bugger, you write everything on your blog."
Therefore in exchange for blog silence, temporary blog silence I assure you, I have been informed of what is really going on in Mumbai. It suffices to say that everything is not as cut and dry as it seems - we live in interesting times! Rest assured that you will get to hear of the latest developments shortly.
Now, to the IPL, which completely deserves the hype it is getting. So what if the Delhi Police can't figure out how to manage traffic in and out of Feroze Shah Kotla, the light-towers looked wonderful in the stadium. And so what if the DDCA does not realise that a match without any announcements of who is batting or bowling really does not work, especially if the scoreboard is a malfunctioning unit (forcing us to check the cricinfo site between overs to figure out what was going on), this is a revolution. Now, my loyalties are town between my city - Delhi and the parochial Bong choice, which would be the extremely glam Kolkata team - the hidden story yesterday was Rahul G's attendance - which almost confirms that SRK will be campaigning for the Congress come 2009. They might need him since food prices are going through the roof, and the Bharat Nirman adverts during cricket may not work - where on earth is the bijli?
Therefore in exchange for blog silence, temporary blog silence I assure you, I have been informed of what is really going on in Mumbai. It suffices to say that everything is not as cut and dry as it seems - we live in interesting times! Rest assured that you will get to hear of the latest developments shortly.
Now, to the IPL, which completely deserves the hype it is getting. So what if the Delhi Police can't figure out how to manage traffic in and out of Feroze Shah Kotla, the light-towers looked wonderful in the stadium. And so what if the DDCA does not realise that a match without any announcements of who is batting or bowling really does not work, especially if the scoreboard is a malfunctioning unit (forcing us to check the cricinfo site between overs to figure out what was going on), this is a revolution. Now, my loyalties are town between my city - Delhi and the parochial Bong choice, which would be the extremely glam Kolkata team - the hidden story yesterday was Rahul G's attendance - which almost confirms that SRK will be campaigning for the Congress come 2009. They might need him since food prices are going through the roof, and the Bharat Nirman adverts during cricket may not work - where on earth is the bijli?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
