Penblunt & Hogwash

As you sow, so you reap

Penblunt

Last edition I had said that the fight-back by the broadcasters against the Indian government trying to bring in regulation was not strictly in the interest of freedom of speech and expression.

There are some very good journalists involved in the process, and their credential for fighting for human rights cannot for a second be doubted, let me say that at the outset.

But there are some who are fighting this as the last ditch battle to stay afloat, and if regulation and a code of conduct are brought in, their freedom to pass of trash as news will fly out the window.

The cause is the clutter.

And it is getting ‘clutterer and clutterer,’ as Alice would say if she ever stepped into this TV wonderland.

There are forty news channels on air at the moment, and there are more than 100 waiting for approval from the Indian ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which alone issues license to any TV channel to operate.

Most of new Indian news channels would be regional, as the market wisdom says, that is where the money lies.

And in any case, there is little scope for more mainstream news channels either in Hindi, the main national language, or English. As it is, there are so many that no one has the time to watch more than two or three.

Also, as an expert said, the trend over the next two years would not be just regional, but city-based channels, and then will start the fun: who would watch the mainstream if all the juice is on your own town or city?

That means, to run city channels, or even regional ones, and run them 24 X 7, the new channels would have to churn out content, and what content would, say, a sleepy central Indian town like Raipur, have for 24 X 7?

It is a steel city so, steel factory gossip, girls and boys eloping, sex behind the Bushes, boys and girls coming back to their senses and going back home and more sex behind the Bushes. Worse, what I fear most is that fractious communal and religious issues would come up front, as caste and communal and religion-based political leaders would seek publicity and provide the perfect fodder on air.

So the regionals are bound to get more murky, and the nationals would have to keep pace or lose the regional audience, and hence sex-ghost-violence to beat clamour-over-clutter would become strategic bread and butter for all channels.

If there is a code in place, this will hardly be possible. And that is the long-term fear of the news channels: they must keep the door open for trash to be beamed over the tube, or else die a ‘content-death’, hardly something to contemplate contentedly!

There is an option, though.

Look at a pair of channels from the same stable, one in Hindi and the other in English. And also look at one of India’s most respected channels in English as well.

They are saying that they would take the perception route to generating survival money. They say that the advertisers are staying with them and despite higher ratings for the vanilla channels, the money the latter are making is not good to stay in operation.

The ‘perception route’ argument is that the best brands – products and services – feel they cannot be seen as part of an ugly channel. Do remember that Indian products and services are going beyond our shores increasingly, and a brand associated with rampant sex, violence and superstition may be questioned when the foreign buyers see them feeding trash.

However, these channels are also facing the eyeball crisis and the debate inside their editorial doors is that there could be a mix of hard core news buffered with some vanilla stuff. Say a short curious-video clip of a few seconds as part of a 24 minute news programme.

The other thing that even some of the vanilla guys are saying is that the viewers are gradually getting fatigued by the incessant bombardment of nonsense. The channels have tried out every formula, family trauma, crime, sex, ghosts… and each formula is drying out as an entertainment point faster than the previous one.

After all, how much variation can there be in the same theme? So if we go by what a respectable Hindi channel editor is saying, despite the fact that they too do a huge amount of spicy, steamy stuff on TV, this fatigue will drive news content towards better hygiene.

Meanwhile, if the advertisers and media buyers continue with their support for the decent channels, the two combined could help improve the situation.

But this is a longish process and the government will not wait that long for the industry to come up with its content code.

The bravado of news channels notwithstanding, and despite the loud shrieks on protecting freedom of speech, the news channels have amply and repeatedly shown their clay feet, by timidly abiding by the government orders and this time around, the first ever, the News Broadcasters Association, the vanguard obstructing machine on the content code issue against irresponsible stings.

So they will obey; as a senior official says: “They’ll have to… we give them the license!”