Penblunt & Hogwash

No TAM tabs anymore

Penblunt

I can tell you that over the next two years there will be a lot of changes in Indian news television, and the prime mover are the two key players, broadcasters and advertisers, but is the news TV industry shifting the blame now, or was what happened logical, given the path the industry took between 2005 and now?

Every this or that person who starts a news channel says before launching, “We shall bring you news, the others can go the witching and sexing and beating way.

But as days go by, each channel goes the same way, beating, sexing and witching, and yet keeps bitching about the others.

I once asked a good friend of mine, what is horoscopy doing in a Hindi news channel?

He said with a twinkle in his all-seeing eyes: “Horoscopy is part of daily life in the Hindi heartland of northern India… what will happen makes sense as news for this audience, and besides, just a short half hour is all they are doing, and that is not the main news.”

OK, thought credulous me.

Of course, he knows a few things more about Hindi heartland than I do.

He comes from Marathi heartland in western India, and I come from the shallow pond that is Bengal in eastern India.

After all, he is a news television editor and they keep getting news from each and every part of the mohalla (neighbourhood), town, city, metro, state and from foreign countries as well, so who am I to question their social understanding!

I told Pinaki that at least his own English news channel is not doing so, and Pinaki, as always issued me a smirk, and said “go do to yourself what they are doing to news television”.

But it took just a month for the gentleman to run a horoscopy show on his own channel, and I could well sympathise with him: the English viewer in the Hindi heartland is not born English, you see, and the first things they hear from their suckling moms and awestruck pops is all Hindi cootchiecoo, isn’t it? So horoscopy is in the DNA of Indians and giving horoscopy is the birthright of every Indian news channels, because like cricket, it is a national issue in the country. Or so the editors would like us to believe.

But now major advertisers and broadcasters have reportedly tied up and formed a non-profit company that is going to set up half a million people metres across all regions and across all social strata, urban and rural, to get the real ratings of channels.

They wanted to beat what is now variously called Tam Tyranny, Friday Blues, etc., stemming out of the fact that TAM rates each channel’s each segment, each day and announces the results each week, on a Friday.

So Friday Blues gets some editors to see red, and some junior editors get it back from then in black and white, and often asked to walk down the yellow line, handing over their zip cards at the gate for one last time.

But now the news channels are saying that with the new non-profit company coming in, it can fight Friday Blues, because it is TAM’s weekly ratings that sent the channels chasing what had sold well last week, whether it be sexing, beating, cheating or life on Jupiter.

The entire week, all channels would hunt out stories that had sold gold last week and go to any length to get them, and then… alas, none of them would do well, instead, a horoscopy programme on a particular channel would sell diamonds…. So, hey palmist, here, here….

I remember when we were boys, we would each year celebrate Saraswati Puja, worshipping of Saraswati, Hindu Goddess of Knowledge. There would be scores of decorated marquees in each street corner, and we would have to book a Brahmin priest to get the Puja done as per scriptures. And they would come at the appointed hour and we paid them for the service.

Then as we became bigger boys, with strange things tingling in certain parts of the body, we concentrated on the “Living Saraswatis” in school skirts, and left the Goddess worship to junior boys.

By then though, the number of marquees had run into hundreds, and I still recall vividly, one Brahmin priest was conducting a puja in a marquee and there were three other groups standing for him to finish.

When he did, a fight broke amongst the groups and the most powerful one finally caught hold of the Brahmin and literally carried him, hand and feet, to their own place!

That is what has happened in news television, but we are now blaming the priest, TAM, without which no media puja is complete.

No, we are not blaming TAM, but its system… 6,000 sample base for a 76 million cable TV universe… totally urbanised (that too only parts of major cities)… weekly ratings… we blame these for every news channel turning to spiritualism (the latest phase, with Lord Rama being the hottest selling guy).

Well, I can tell you that over the next two years there will be a lot of changes in Indian news television, but is the news TV industry shifting the blame?

Primarily, one so called news channel started this two years ago, and the market followed suit, and now the media says TAM’s weekly rating system is the real culprit. No news channel has been able to stay put with hard news.

Each of the more serious ones claimed they were not chasing TAM TRPs, but building brands long term.

So why the relief now that a new rating company has come, and why the demand: “No more weekly ratings”?

I rest my case here, Sires!