Penblunt & Hogwash

Balls and Bloodimindedness

Taslima Nasreen was, pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening.

Taslima Nasreen was, pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening.

Breaking News, Breaking News,

Breaking News,

Breaking News,

Breaking News,

Taslima Nasreen was, pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening.

Taslima Nasreen was, pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening.

Taslima Nasreen was, pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening.

Where? In Hyderabad Press Club?

No, there she was pushed, bullied and beaten, but for a few minutes

Taslima Nasreen was, pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening on a Hindi news channel.

The same four minute shot was shown from noon till night, again and again and again, and when it had been shown the zillionth time, it was still Breaking News…. You know the format

And mind you Taslima Nasreen will be pushed, bullied and beaten, from morning till evening on a Hindi news channel next year as well, when the same news channel would showcase its last year’s International Coverage with pride…

… and send the footage for the national News Television Awards, and if it did not win a prize, the executive producer would stage a walkout.

I have said this about Hindi news coverage many times, so ask me what is new that I am speaking on this time, or am I just being a good old journo recycling old words in new edition of a hackneyed column?

The big news, the Breaking News for the readers of this column is I just learnt that the Hindi news channels do this not because they lack creativity (which they do) have not enough money (which they don’t, compared to say CNN), or because the average Indian viewer wants crude and crass stuff (which they enjoy flipping through but do not necessarily demand).

They tell me this is an Indian invention in the TV news space, a proper Indian patentable intellectual property to catch maximum eyeballs over the largest amount of time!

I will skip all the laments of how eyeball journalism is killing off news, for that I have said often enough and none of my readers have handed me a kerchief ever.

The point to go to, sans lament, is that because the Hindi channels do not have enough money and creativity, and because they know (sic) “that there is the basic animal in all of us, however much varnish we apply on our outsides”.

What value does that animal create for the TV channels?

Well, there are 30 news channels already existing in the country, and there are more than a hundred coming up with licenses (official figures given by the Secretary, Information & Broadcasting), the scramble for the ad pie is break neck, and so everyone needs those precious of all things: eyeballs.

So sans creativity and money, they have developed an Indian model to use repeated images of violence, sex, myths, ghosts and dismembered limbs, with a massive calculation.

It goes like this:

If a channel is watched by 10 people for 10 minutes each, it will give it a certain figure of 100 eyeballs (actually 200, if some are not one-eyed viewers). People watch serious news channels for 10 minutes or more, so this is the index for serious news channels

But if a channel has 100 viewers who flip by it for just three minutes, it has 300 (or 600, as you wish) eyeballs, and then, the TV viewers of this kind keep coming and going, so that means, the new viewer that comes in will also stay for another three minutes if shown that Taslima Nasreen is being beaten black and blue at the Press Club of Hyderabad.

That new viewer will skip the channel the moment s/he sees that the news channel is playing the fool with her / his time and insulting her / his sensibilities, but by then someone new would come in.

This is the great Indian intellectual property contribution to the TV news space.

The TV news world is today divided into two parts, those who give what we knew as news, and those who call themselves a news channel and give eminently avoidable trivia as news.

The ad pie?

The trivia channels are free to air and hence accessible to all and sundry, and in a poor country that means a vast majority.

The serious guys in the market feel building a brand that is respectable will get them the better product brands, the upmarket stuff that comes with a monetary premium.

The real fear that is stalking the latter group is, if the trivia channels keep getting such massive eyeballs for years, the big brands might just shift from the decent to the indecent channels.

So they floated a debate that there should be two types of channels: news channels and reality channels, which should not be allowed to call themselves ‘news channels’.

Very well, said the big tall guy from the nastiest of the trivia channels, so be it, call us an entertainment channel, tabloid channel or what you might. But the eyeballs will stay with us.

Which amounts to saying that the average Indian eyeball is looking for the crude the crass and the ugly?

If I may say so just this one time: “Balls”.