Guess who is back?

A little birdie, well a rather large birdie to be fair to the man, told me that Peter Mukerjea is back in India and all has been forgiven by everyone other than 'Mr Why-didn't-I-get-a-Gong'. The really interesting part of this small item of News is that no less than Uncle M himself has given him a new operation and that is to launch Fox News in India. Since this is a blog post and not a news piece I can use the term 'sources' freely - the new channel, with a history of hardly showing any news, or biased news at best - which will not make it any different than every other channel on Indian television - will be launched by end-2010. Of course, fat-arsed idiots will be licking their lips at the prospect of ripping someone else off (though it is a bad career move to rip Uncle M off) this 'supposed' new channel might also depart from the obvious by being a bit more right-wing than usual - and right-wing does not mean 'War, War, War!'
Now one can question whether India really needs another news channel - there are no conclusive numbers to show that being in the English general news category is remotely profitable. Every single channel in the space suffers from the 'paid news' syndrome. Print publications at least - well English print at least - puts out 'Consumer Connect Initiative' or 'Media Marketing Initiative' - you don't see that when channels go ga-ga promoting movies and the like. Indeed, this interesting nugget in Money Life makes you wonder how viable the media is in general. And in India, the iPad will hardly be a sudden White Knight. Ask any magazine that costs more than Rs 50.
PS: And as the debate about what journalists should do when confronted with a life or death situation, CNN's Anderson Cooper shows the way.