Soiled Undies

Is there any good way of going about lay-offs? Nope. I know a lot of senior editors and while people constantly get removed for screw-ups and non-performance, lay-offs are not those. Here, people, usually hard-working ones lose a job because of reasons beyond their control. But even then, information can play a huge role.
Telling employees that you have more lay-offs scheduled through a third-party seems strange and to many not honest. I have been lucky that I have worked under editors who believe at (a level of, any which way) transparency. Most of them have at least. I have always had issues with people who protect non-confidential or work-related ‘information’ – whether that is company information on employment or a phone number. No I don’t always want to know what launches are around the corner or detailed financials, but if times are tough I would like to know what the hell is going on and openness there is something that I respect.
When that trust breaks down, that reflects on the quality of reportage and the confidence of even your best resources. And trust can break down – and then the stories and the leaks start. Some true and some patently absurd, but because of the situation you actually even listen to them. There are stories that people have been called back from assigned for a ‘talk’ or that the really high-cost senior resources haven’t cut back. And confidence levels drop to the point that numbers start to fall. As do profits and it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
It doesn’t have to be this way, you know. But the trouble is that the business books will probably look back and write about this as a case-study in ‘How not to’ and that, frankly, is the worst condemnation you can get.

PS: It appears that other than the ICL, Subhash Chandra’s other ‘venture’ (which was a JV) is also facing trouble and is on the block with the JV partners looking to cede management control. Hmmm…
EDIT: Typo in headline corrected - 'Soiled Undies' I guess is the best interpretation and what I really wanted to say in the first place.

Media Layoff Watch

The silent layoffs are over, the big boys have begun laying off employees. In the hundreds. Last night UndieTV laid off 114 people - mostly from the defunct MetroNation Delhi channel (that said, their tie-up with the Kasturi's for MetroNation Chennai goes on apace) but there were some lay-offs from 24x7 and India as well. At Times Of India, following the depressing 30 per cent pay cuts which has several employees rather pissed off (whenever I meet a Times reporter at a Presser all they can do is bitch out their employer - so much for employee satisfaction) they have also been layoffs - 87 people across the country have been let go. Of course, there are still lack of mad people at Times though, because according to this post they want to sell a stake in their Broadcast operation valuing at $200 million. Which is a lot more than the other, much larger networks, are worth. Just to see Arnab screaming and shouting and being put in his place by various Pakistani journalists.
This is the start of the high profile editorial lay-offs, hudreds of people in ad sales and marketing functions across channels have been laid off over the past few months as well. If you have any news about lay-offs or were laid-off yourself email me at presstalk (at) gmail (dot) com or just leave a comment. That said, I will not publish libellous or derogatory comments. If you feel treated unfairly, you are a journalist so you should be able to put it into words properly.

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.

Online Advice

When the owners first send a mail asking employees to think about every phone call, yes every phone call, then attack floaters that their organisation has hired given the guidance from the top (guess where from?) over the years. Then in a more recent mail attacks the organisation for being lazy and sleeping on the job. This is not a good sign!

But now their 'celebrity' correspondent attacks people on the internet as having malafide intentions instead of engaging with them. I believe that a 4500 member group on Facebook is not malafide, rather it is symptomatic of a crisis. The best way of dealing with this is engaging with users. The Naval Chief drags up an old controversy and the only journalist to come to your defence is an old friend and the paper which prints your column but several others keep quiet - does the establishment concur or is the defence of the journalist not seen as worth it. 

I really don't know about the veracity of the allegations, I was in college during the Kargil War and really didn't bother watching every waking minute of it on telly. But we lost a lot of soldiers in that war and their memory, above all else must never be forgotten nor must Musharraf's treachery, remembering Kargil for this is stupid. 

But why are there so few defenders, why did Admiral Mehta have so many people back him? And there were people supporting him, you got that sense at dinners and parties. Have so many bridges been burnt over the years and do so many people have it in for her? Or is it the failure to recognise that there is a problem. And there is a way to deal with this problem, and not go about it in a ham handed way.

Let me think of some answers here.

Firstly, most blogs are not sensational or have thousands of readers. Many of them are small, personal and opinionated. However, if several thousand people all over the world have a negative opinion about you, something that can be gauged from a variety of sources such as Technorati, deal with it. The beauty of the internet is that it is democratic, it can give someone completely useless fifteen minutes of fame, it can also bring down somebody. I will agree that there is a lot of slanderous stuff online, like the stuff about me having sex in an ATM (I wish!). And yes, there are bloggers who will spread such unsubstantiated bunkum more and might cite Wikipedia as a source (the perils of trusting Wikipedia, then again journalists across India do, I mainly read Wikipedia for WW2 stories like this cool one). When the number of such bloggers is low, you can hopefully ignore it, but when a large number of the online population starts grumbling - take notice - and engage. You engage with readers and viewers - no wait, that is just Delhi dinner parties. 

But back to my point, the internet and especially Google Search is becoming rather integral to all our lives. Many of us do ego-search. Now when something like this happens, there is a lot of cross-linking across blogs. Now, if you have the Google toolbar on Firefox or IE (PS: anyone know how to see PR on Chrome?) you see a little green bar, that represents pagerank, which is calculated by a complex algorithm, that includes these links and the term. More links like this and your Google search results are doomed - well as you can see - they're not very good right now. Shit, I really didn't know they were that bad. Damn, I'd be pissed off if things were this bad too. 

Regulation is not the answer, because you can never shut up all your critics online, because you'll have critics everywhere. You'll have your supporters too. But many critics can be won over if you bother to engage. They're not like the Pakistani government mired in decades of thinking of India as the enemy. They're desis, like all desis they have strong and often misguided and misinformed opinions, I mean we still vote criminals in huge numbers into Parliament. That is not the point, as an opinionmaker, your job is to not only shape opinions but also to an extent be shaped by opinions. The latter part isn't happening.

Oh, and the next time you say 'Regulate the Internet' - don't expect online support for the 'Please do not regulate TV Channels' plea that you guys will put out. Listen, recognise the internet as the future of media distribution, engage with it, participate in it and not just with 'zombie fans', and hey... maybe next time, the shit won't hit the fan. This is not meant as an ill-itentioned post. I don't want to get at anybody nor do I have any malafide intentions towards anybody, but this sort of whacked out response bothers me.

I love controversy, don't I?

I am not posting in support of anybody or even in support of 'blogging' in general, but sometimes some stuff can be deliciously good fun. Such as an organisation mired in losses (Rs 120 crore last quarter) that plays videos from the internet probably violating copyright and lays off lots of young kids protecting their most reviled asset. Incidentally, I have the 'dummy copy' of the new RPG magazine called 'Open' edited by Sandipan Deb (not 'Talk' since the RNI didn't give that registration) and I will quote a blurb from Page 28 of this dummy magazine sent out to several advertisers and media buyers (PS: It is a very nice looking magazine, I won't pass judgement on its commercial viability but it looks nice and the photography is surprisingly good). The blurb goes...
"I loathe close-ups of dead bodies, I loathe reporters asking survivors 'how do you feel'" - Barkha Dutt, Journalist.
Don't sue me, it won't be worth it!
This is a cache of the offensive post! (Abhishek has a copy of the 'offensive' post here)
And the apology tendered!
Amit Agarwal steps in!
As does DesiPundit
And Smoke Signals
I really think that when Wikipedia puts in adjectives in a profile, well, thatb proves that the site is shoddy, but how NDTV manages to constantly manage to piss off its core audience amazes me. Times are tough for everyone, and whern your losses are mounting pissing off viewers is not a smart move. Honest! The Mediaah! incident happened too long ago when the community was far too small, but Ponytail C still pays somewhat of a price for taking people on, it would be a shame if NDTV manages to shoot itself slap-bang in the ass on this matter.
But I'll keep filling you guys in on it. Dang, if January 2009 has been such a bomb of a month online in India, what about the coming eleven months. I can't wait!

Erm.. like what?

Firstly I read this. Times and NDTV? Interesting. It is no secret that Times is hurting, the group is still in the Black despite being burnt on long-term newsprint contracts but they're making money. At least the print side is, television is a different kettle of fish. But a tie-up might make sense for both sides. NDTV has no experience of making money. None whatsoever. Times knows how to make money, but their experience of TV is well, the less the said the better. So Times+NDTV in Delhi. Maybe. But then again, NDTV is hedging, they've tied up with The Hindu in Chennai, though with a freeze on capex this year, that channel may not see the light of day.
Also, there was this very interesting graphic in Mint (PDF) recently and that puts what P. Sainath (who in reference to later in this post, refused a gong) says in context. Sainath accused mainstream media of ignoring agrarian India and well, looking at 2008 coverage that is horribly true (though, The Hindu was also measured). However, I suspect that 'International Affairs' includes all news of Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka and lets be honest our neighbours have been newsy this year and I'm sure that 95 per cent of the coverage was from these three countries, four per cent on Obama and one per cent on the rest of the world. 'National Security and Defence', I presume would include all terror blasts and 2008 had one hell of a lot of them. Yup, go down the chain and you see that 'Public Policy & Governance', 'Education' and 'Science & Tech' is way down the list. As the column accompanying the graphic says, this should be a wake-up call to Editors, there can be substantial improvements in coverage.
A little birdie tells me in reference to a 'pompous ass' mention in a Sunday column that someone is very upset that he didn't get a gong. Journalists close to the government always get gongs and god forbid that the BJP come back to power later this year and all chances of any gongs or Parliamentary posts might go away. But to abuse a senior bureaucrat Hmm, corrigendum or not, that was intended, but then again MKN still has his job. That said, it is good to know that the Sangh leadership is finally managing to talk up against the extortionists that are the rabblerousers and rioters across the country.
The BJP's 'Digital Cell' is trying hard to project Advani as youthful, through his 'website', and in the process is sending a lot of money to Mountain View but incidents like Mangalore do not help, demographics and voter profiles are changing and until the Sangh can get a grip of its loony wing and get kids into the fold, things are not going to change. India needs a credible right-of-centre party and increasingly, it seems to be the Congress which after ditching the Commies has started treading ever so slightly to the right.

Local Schlocal

Sorry, this is my Monday Rant and I've not bothered to hyperlink anything, so apologies in advance.
You know, the speculation about NDTV Metro Nation shutting down has been doing the rounds for quite a while. Metro Nation along with Good Times are frankly pointless channels. I mean they could have been a lot better, but I really don't see any reason to watch them - everytime I've made the mistake of pushing the red button, you see rehashed Express Newsline or Times City stories along with a load of Delhi cliches on the lifestyle stories. As a city channel it fails royally.
Of course, in my honest opinion, it is a lot better than Good Times which tries to be something it isn't. When you have Discovery Travel and Living why watch second-best? Yes, so they have a captive audience on Kingfisher aircraft, but only the brain dead watch Good Times on the aircraft that don't have Live TV, I flew to Port Blair on an aircraft that didn't have live television and I watched the airshow. Trust me, it is more entertaining.
Back to the point, it seems that NDTV has put plans of a Chennai Metro Nation on hold. Good. But as someone told me the incremental costs of launching a channel should be minimal and good 'flanking channels' always help with advertisers, but by all indications from the movie hall, Metro nation has ridiculously high operating costs. Their traffic jam of an OB-van, you might have seen it float around Delhi with its indoor studio acting like a bad roadblock sometimes on the Def-Col BRT stretch (now you know why I dislike them even more!) costs over half a lakh to run everyday. Their employee costs are insanely high - with one insider saying that more people are employed there than watch the channel. Which I might even agree with given that the distribution is horrible - the bar on Tata-Sky is silly. OK, their anchorettes are pretty, but big deal, they don't have exclusive rights to vapid bimbettes.
The channel was a bad business idea to begin with. I agree with trhe concept of city channels, localised news channels is the direction that the US has taken. In the Bay Area and Orange County I got essentially local news on NBC and ABC with cut-outs during the Today show. For pure news there are other channels - CNN and MSNBC, but even on CNN you have cut-outs to the local news affiliate.
But India isn't a 'hyper local' market as yet and I don't think we'll get there for a while either, though I do believe we will get there all right. By our nature we like discussing news and affairs of the world (or maybe just in Delhi) - OK, the world for us is India and to an extent Pakistan, because as a people we are horribly insular to our local geographical neighbourhood. Zimbabwe could in chaos, but they're just a pesky cricket playing nation against whom we score records and whose administrators vote for the BCCI all the time. Who cares? Maybe only The Hindu reader, but that paper's maniacal obsession with Sri Lanka makes you wonder if they're a vested interest. But, that is another debate on our foreign coverage - long live the interwebs.
Localisation of news will happen - there is some of it happening already (see the papers, though Metro Now's imminent demise proves that Delhi is not the best local market for stand-alone papers with little or no national content either), but I think NDTV bit off a bit too much, too early. There will be several city channels - slick ones not the cable owned channels on various platforms from TV to the Internet by 2015. And bad as it might be, I do believe that MetroNation should survive, not in its current avatar, but it would be sad to see them go the way of BiTV - another concept ahead of its time.

Floaters

You know what they are, they're those gas filled turds that refuse to go down no matter how many times you pull the flush. No wait... Well, actually they're the useless idiots who like making loud noises and pretending to be important while the rest of the office works. Actually, in many media offices they're quite a few 'floaters'. people who don't do any homework and just pass on, getting a pay cheque and hoping no-one notices. Recently, a colleague told me the story of a girl, the business reporter from a very fast Hindi channel who pointed at the promoter of the channel and asked 'Who's he?' That is just one example of a floater. Anyway, what the Roy's letter yesterday says that floaters won't be tolerated anymore. Now, I don't want to read between the lines but I'm wondering if there will be a performance audit within the next few weeks and 'non-performance' will be used as an excuse (well, valid though) to lay off people.

And if NDTV starts laying off people, what about the other channels. It isn't as if the problem of floaters is restricted to NDTV. It is an industry-wide phenomenon. Payroll management will become the flavour of the next few months. Oh, and if you are a media school graduate looking for a job, you've picked a horrible year to graduate. But you knew that already.

And go watch this video from The Killers in the meantime. And see the trailer below!

Cost Cutting?

I was at a bar last night (or tonight if you're reading this in the next few hours) along with quite a few people from Undie TV and around midnight some of them were all getting frantic calls, it seems a late night mailer went out from Radika and Prannoy Roy. It contained the dreaded word - 'cost cutting'. What it said along with the fact that all NDTV senior management are taking 20% pay cuts are some rather ridiculous things - including advising employees to mind phone calls. Now call me a penny pincher - but there are better ways of doing things. I understand that travel budgets need to be cut at every major news organisation and trust me I work at one and we are trying hard and thankfully doing rather well, or so I'm told. At least my business division is. I understand that cost-cutting is a reality, but the best part of the NDTV mailer was about 'floaters' - some people work very hard but there are many people who 'float'. Now I wonder what that means?

Given that Metro Now is probably shutting down, I have received a couple of mails from panicked employees about what is going on, and not just with interns, but even full-time staffers, I don't think the next three months are going to be great. In fact, the media industry, particularly listed companies have been great practitioners of 'creative' accounting and might indirectly suffer the fallout of the Satyam saga. even though Ramalinga Raju surrendered so that he could avoid SEBI questioning, and I think he seriously underestimated the media fallout, but the media fallout might be rather bad both for him and the listed media industry.

More tomorrow, when the Grey Goose wears off.

On the INX affair, please read this post.

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?

EchTee responds to the Navy

Yesterday, one of the funnier banners I saw at the impotent protest marches read 'Thank you to the Media', which somehow came up over and over on CNN-IBN. I do not agree with a couple of mails doing the rounds that the English news media ignored CST - the attacks were ongoing at Taj and the Oberoi, but the Hindi channels which mind you, a bulk of the country watched did a far better job. Anyway, regarding this post and this follow-up the attack on the Navy Chief, who not so long ago was getting plaudits for going after the Somali pirates is being led by no less than The V himself. Somehow, the defence reads like 'How dare you attack us!'
Of course, one can be completely cynical and argue that it reads more like 'How dare you attack one of MY friends!' (and we could go on about that) But, despite the denials and the argument that the Admiral was not based on 'fact'. But then again, nor are fake emotions and stupid questions. That group I spoke about in my last post now has close to 2400 members and that should be worrying to some people in that channel (not even counting the several SMSes about her that are doing the rounds), because while there will be people who will dismiss the Internet as some new-age fad, these were former 'core viewers' and losing them is a problem. Yes, the Navy Chief should be in deep water for what should be dinner-table conversation, but the very fact that this incident (true or not, and I will not take General Ved Malik's word as the gospel truth, there is a shitload of stuff on Bharat-Rakshak that the establishment will deny, but is in all probability true), has been brought out into the open displays that some parts of the establishment are angry with televised media and one smug channel in particular. That NDTV is in trouble is not too difficult for someone to see, and I mean that from a completely financial point of view, but letting out the attack dogs in defence of the channel will not help. There needs to be serious introspection both by the journalist involved and the channel. There is a palpable sense of grievance that the general population, OK, the middle classes feel towards the English media, address that concern instead of closing ranks. Why on earth are people pissed off, and why did everybody switch over to watching a rabid Arnab on Times Now? Why on earth did Sreenivasan Jain, who was by far and away the best reporter out of Mumbai for the network in question (and actually, when you think about it, the best overall) not get enough airtime?
And really, with our current defence minister pussy-footing with the Defence Budget, rather the Naval budget over the past three years, why on earth are we going after the Navy? Like the rest of the incompetent and impotent UPA administration, A K Anthony has done nothing. The Naval Chief was indiscreet and maybe he needed to check facts, but maybe the facts are right. Filing for defamation may not be a great idea because skeletons might start pouring out from hidden closets. Skeletons such as the contrived coverage of the Kashmir earthquake from nowhere near the real site.
Listen, I am going to go back to what I said earlier. Introspection is the order of the day - in India's security apparatus too used to protecting politicians sell out the country, and by those politicians as well. But also for the televised English media. Otherwise we will no better than the Pakistani media. And my god, those guys are from a different planet.

MKN

I was a bit puzzled by The V's stinging rebuke of MKN yesterday. Puzzled not because MKN is admittedly a twat and should be held responsible, but the fact that all three HT Group papers gave the story the same treatment. I suddenly remembered that a few years ago, Sunday HT had done a brilliant piece damning MKN - the piece had been done by Aditya Sinha if I recall correctly and all hell broke loose after that piece. But I was just wondering how much was yesterday about settling scores and about finger pointing. As I said, I still maintain that MKN is a twat, and according to some telco officials he is also a corrupt twat but I have only anecdotal evidence  from colleagues and peers of that. 

Now, was there an intelligence failure that led to the Mumbai attacks? Yes. So why is RAW going around telling that they warned everybody. Yesterday the Navy Chief at his presser did mention something about 'general intelligence' and 'actionable intelligence'. You know that is like saying - 'You will die eventually' or 'You have Cancer and could die soon'. The former is a general statement of truth - like saying that the Pakistani media makes the Indian media look good, I mean lying bastards those guys are. So much so that a former colleague who was an unabashed Paki-lover, and I mean unabashed to the extent that wanted to strangulate him during a cricket match is saying this is time for Indian military action. Anyway, back to the point, do we know that there are training camps in Pakistan? Yes we do, but nothing can be done until we know when they send doped up assholes armed to the teeth across the border.

Reading between the lines and talking to a few other senior journalists, a theory occurred. This is the blame game starting. Someone is trying to protect his skin. Given the hard-handed way this petty government could react, we won't write about fraternal ties. But the fact of the matter is, several people are trying to protect their skins right now, and not just Vilasrao Deshmukh and a couple of media organisations that fell behind with the news. Anyway, I still beieve more heads will roll in the coming months, quite a few more heads will roll. Though, given the commies hold in Kerala, VS's head will not. But I have a bad feeling that the clip will be played over and over during the 2009 elections in that state. He had his 'Macaca' moment.

Also I haven't had the time to say a word of how good the major Hindi News Channels were, I found India TV's 'interview' a bit distasteful, but technically, it is good journalism. Biased, one-sided intellectual debates indulged in by one channel in particular, where Simi Garewal, of all people, spoke the way several people are feeling and got booed by the crowd (talk about audience management) was not at all good journalism. And that is seeming to reflect on the ratings where Times Now despite Arnab's occasional rants against politicians (yes I know Politicians are scum, but let us fix democracy and not talk about Army Rule as evidently some people were being goaded to do) has gained tremendously. We'll see if these gains are short-term or long-term gains and how advertisers react, since a lot of budgets are in for re-negotiation in a few weeks at the year flips over. Would Times Now's actions actually helped ET-TV it's soon-to-be launched sister channel? Hmmm... Questions to ponder.

And talking about ET, I feel sorry for the guys. The ET Awards were supposed to happen the next day 27/11 and in this crisis they have been indefinitely postponed. Bad luck there, but I don't think this is the time to do anything. I guess they will re-sched it, but that will be a nightmare of times and dates. And there is this perceptible feeling that things seem to have slowed down here as well. Anyway, I should get to work now...

Hmmm...

October has ended, or is about to end in a few hours any which way and it has been a rather surreal month. To quote my fellow Lewis-fan Shyam from his Twitter feed (yes, I'm a social media junkie too) - "If you were to short life, you would invest in a failed relationship using borrowed emotions." But then again, you can argue that we're constantly short-trading on life!
The problem is that one can't really short a media business, especially if you have invested a ton of money in 'license' rights which actually means that if you have bought the India rights to something, you will have to pay a ton of money to walk out. Unless you set up your own show, like Conde Nast India, but then, like General Motors, you might get fried because your main revenue-generating operation is sinking. And here we were hearing rumours that Portfolio was on the anvil in India. But seriously, a lot of plans are on hold - after the entire drama earlier this year with people leaving and no leaving, it seems the FT-18 venture might be on 'pause' as well as could 'Money Mantra'.
Accha, the organisations I spoke about in my last post are both up for sale, which rules out Bennett, HT Media and India Today Group and also DNA, which, despite putting off some launches and supposed simmering issues between Zee and Bhaskar is not on the block as yet. However, some new launches by even the healthier groups could be in trouble, because the chaos of the past two years had driven salaries to insanely high levels, particularly for loss making products.
I'm being pessimistic because of this, and organisations would rather hang onto their Rockstar's and Diva's rather than asking them to take 10 per cent cuts (and these are guys who recently got massive salary hikes) which means the 20-somethings will be out of jobs. And why am I being so pessimistic, because even though NDTV is profligate in its expenses, its results were shocking to say the least (OK, launches aside, but still - anyway, the markets have pummelled the scrip, down over 80 per cent from its highs, though TV18 has lost 86 per cent of its value and both scrips have sunk further while the markets have climbed today, is that indicative of something?) and the situation is as bad in several other places even though the losses might have been papered over with smart accounting. Some commodity prices have fallen, but distribution costs for TV channels and newsprint costs for newspapers and magazines haven't. There is an AIG type hole in the Indian media scene.
Wait and watch, this winter ain't gonna be fun.

Points to ponder!

I ust switched the telly in office to UndieTV and saw that infuriating Rajiv Makhani on telly doing a show called News Net. I've caught glimpses of the show earlier and friends at GK-1 assure me that it is one of the highest rated shows on that channel. However, I was just wondering - the show lifts clips off the internet, puts a "Courtesy: YouTube" or attributes the video as submitted by some viewer who discovered it. However, I think NDTV is flirting with or actually indulging in large scale copyright violations on this show.
Let me elucidate. YouTube is up shit creek, not just with the Viacom lawsuit but also with T-Series suing them in the Delhi HC for copyright violations. The fact of the matter is that much of the content on YouTube or on other video sharing sites is copyrighted. I do not believe the argument I believe NDTV might use if sued "But we found it on YouTube" holds any weight. They are a media company and probably understand the nuances of copyright better than most. Secondly, I have uploaded videos to YouTube - for no commercial return and I'm quite happy to put those videos up for people to watch on YouTube. Like some images I have on Flickr, I'm happy to put some of those videos under the 'Non Commercial Creative Commons' license. But isn't News Net a commercial show? By which I mean, does NDTV make money from the show? The video is copyrighted to me, so if someone else is making money, no matter what amount by showing the video aren't they supposed to part with some money. Some of the videos they've shown have are watermarked with a 'blurred' channel's logo - serious copyright violations in my book.
Newspapers and magazines across the country treat material on the internet, images and text as 'free' content. It isn't and I'm surprised NDTV went down the same path. These guys a large and supposedly 'respectable' media company even though they have attrocious HR practices and extremely egoistical people in positions of influence. I'm just waiting for the lawsuit(s).
The second point is regarding ESPN's SportsCenter - which is a highly opinionated sports news show - it is not just a highlights reel but a full-on news show and apparently the4y hate the powers-that-be in cricket. I don't believe that the I&B ministry has classified 'Sports News' as a separate category. Aren't news channels limited to just 26% FDI and doesn't ESPN have 74% FDI.
Just points to ponder!

Beware the perils of the internet!

Dang, UndieTV check before you take something you see on the internet as the gospel truth. No wait, your News Net show is hosted by a well-spoken person who doesn't quite understand technology but pretends damn well. Anyway, here is the video in question, which if you've been trawling the depths of the internet is an old internet fake. Read BoingBoing occasionally, there are editors out there who do and cheat from there as well, but we won't name names right now.
Here is the video is question.

Note to NDTV

I hope you realise that Kashmiri Pundits pretty much despise your channel. How can you call the BJP's actions in Jammu 'communal' when giving the PDP a clean chit and talking of how Muslim sentiments were hurt. Have you ever been to a Pandit camp? Have you spoken about the huge levels of corruption inside teh PDP and that Mehbooba Mufti was freed in exchange for terrorists (but the NDA screwed up on IC-814, which I also buy, but same side of the coin after all). I mean, it is quite obvious that PDP indulged in some electioneering and communalised the issue. In fact, Muslim appeasement by so-called 'secular' parties is fine, but if the Hindu right-wing even makes a peep on religion, it is deemed communal. Plus, henceforth, please somewhere in your channel website or during a broadcast, please carry a disclaimer mentioning that your promoter's brother-in-law is the Chinese tatta in India. A western channel would make that disclosure, why don't you? people need to know that Radhika Roy and Brinda Karat are sisters. If you can spend time doing FUD stories (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) on unproven allegations surrounding mobile radiation you certainly can do this much.
I'm not saying this because I might have right-wing sympathies, several parts of the Sangh are frankly unpalatable, run by illiterate idiots. The last government did not smell of roses, but I think the entire country would agree they did a better job than this bunch of twats.

Wow...

HTTabloid has been around for a while, calling out to escort agencies. Now, NDTV wants in on the act as well. One question - why? This is the internet stupid, I mean if I want to see semi-naked women I just have to Google (after switching SafeSearch off you can even see total no-hold barred porn). And if the logic is that these portals serve up silly news - heck, all news is pretty silly nowadays. Like the name though.

Skid marks on the undie!

Many of my friends at UndieTV 24x7 have been an aggrieved bunch of late, not just because the anchors have been shuffled around and 'credible' faces have been brought in, but in an attempt to rehabilitate some people, a whole new bunch of script checkers have emerged, whereby 35-year old senior reporters are having scripts 'checked' by 22-year old greenhorns, and this has as you can expect in a world full of inflated egos led to a summer of discontent at Archana. There is no full-scale mutiny as yet, but that is what the East India Company thought in 1857.
It also appears that simmering tensions between channels are getting worse, and one person in the channel claimed that 'How can a channel that no-one gets have a higher viewership than ours!' (refering to Metronation). It also appears that a whole bunch of senior reporters are in 'talks' with an upcoming new English news channel being set up. I am sure things are not as bad as some people say they are, but with corporate focus shifting entirely to the entertainment channels, and musclebound self-styled 'tech experts' claiming that they are now the powers that be, things are not looking so good either.
In other news, while some people will not desert the sinking ship just yet, it appears that the resident editor of the ship's Delhi edition is running away to Dubai. Thanks to a ego-clash 'incident' involving an old man past his prime, the ship might also end up losing one of its better reporters - even though the 'incident' in question led to the French ambassador calling up Madam B. Though, the sinking ships tale is not even half as interesting as the tale of the confused old men but because I have been 'embargoed' from writing about the degree of confusion, I will not.
And lastly, so what if you are a new paper, you must follow Indian journalism's hallowed tradition of plagiarism! Just what can you possibly say?

Oh well...

Sometimes discretion is better than valour, but what I can say is that once this saga comes to an end, and it will one way or another by the end of this month, you will see a lot more here. Now, what I can write is that things are beyond the point of no return.
In other news, exciting things are happening at Undie TV 24x7 with a complete reshuffle of senior editors and anchors - the channel feels that 'credible' faces are required on the prime-time shows, which will probably lead to the channel losing some of their very good other anchors. They did lose one fairly recently who went and joined PR. There are also major doubts among several of the reporting staff, but also a feeling that the channel did need to change if it had to keep up with CNN-IBN. According to some senior reporters there is also a level of office politics involved with senior anchors playing against each other - Vasu's return to Delhi being just one of the signs.
The problem here is also that a lot of the senior editors have stayed the same for far too long, NDTV 24x7 has gone far too long, going back to the Star News days without major change and things have come to head. While issues on the ToI-FT front will more or less resolve within a few weeks, expect more news to come out of Archana.

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!