Do we really need 24/7 rolling news? asks Hasan Suroor in the Hindu. (Link via India Uncut) : this is Amit Varma’s take on this – Who is “we”, and what is meant by “need”? If there is a market for 24/7 news, then it’ll exist, as it should. If not, it won’t.
I don’t see this an an expression of a political ideology (as Amit does) – instead, I wonder – which came first, the market or the product?
Existential question, I know. But I see less and less of conventional marketing now – where a product was designed and launched according to the market need. Now, what rules is the hoary marketing rule – be there first – or create a category where you are first.
Seems to me this is the case with television news channels too.
Newspapers facing competition have resorted to the ‘give-them-more’ tactics. More pages, more lifestyle and general interest topics (not necessarily more news, of course).
And television channels, fortunate enought o be more flexible than their print brothers, believe in two things :
1.Give them more…
So now we have regular hourly, half hourly news reports. Followed by repeats of these hourly news reports. And then special programs. On different topics.
Crime, politics, parties, movies, fashion, health, sports. Where does a channel like Zoom end and a news channel begin?
And did I mention crime? And politics? What about crime then? Don’t forget crime. Sansani, Jurm, Vardaat, Kaal Kapaal Mahakaal, Crime Patrol, Crime Reporter.
Sex scandal in Patna beauty parlour was the scoop of the day on one of these channels last week… All the right ingredients : Bihar, beauty, sex – but hardly prime time news material?
2.And give it to them first – or scream loudly enough for people to believe that…
I was watching news on Wednesday – and each news channel worth its name had an “exclusive” on the rains – each channel claimed to be the first to send a man up in space for an ariel view of the city – I remember falling asleep watching Sreenivasan Jain on a chopper… The US and the then USSR would have been less hostile and competitive about their space program way back in the 1960s…
A strange situation where all television news channels are equally sabse tez…
Which brings me back to the original question – slightly altered to ask – is there really such a thing as 24/7 rolling news?
charu, so true – i was watching something on tv the other day – can’t remember which channel or what they were talking about with those glum faces – and i remember thinking, how similar they all are, even their sound bytes… ugh. i hate, hate, hate television so much…and i totally agree with hasan suroor on what’s happening with the news because of this:
hello Charu: how are you? Thoroughly enjoyed reading all your posts. Cheers!
Charu….
I’ve found most of these 24/7 channels wasting my time, reporting the rescue of the old lady’s cat stranded on a tree 15 times in one day.
I wonder why they don’t spend time doing good 1 hour features of news worthy issues which never make it to news…..an independent and well researched analysis of say a major problem in that city, or a multiple feature on farmer suicides, or water issues or something like that. Somehow, i haven’t seen that in any 24/7 news channel.
Instead, you only get celebrity snippets and interviews, and ..Sex scandal in Patna beauty parlour……
I think the quality of news coverage felt better some years ago, when there were say 5-6 news reports each day….and one looked forward to the 9o’clock news.
charu, i’ve linked to this post of yours here.
I agree with most of what all of you have to say on the content of the news channels, but differ on wether it must exist.
The idea of a 24/7 news channel is that anytime you switch to the news channel, you have access to the news. Simple as that. One is not expected to sit around watching the news 24/7 – incase you do, then it gets repetitive.
I think you nailed it when you said ” Now, what rules is the hoary marketing rule – be there first – or create a category where you are first.” Look at what happened here in the US. First there was darkness, then God created light, then CNN. Then, in the 1990s, Fox came up with it’s own news channel. They wanted to be different from CNN, so what did they do? They started airing opinion oriented shows in the evenings. Pretty soon, these shows became nothing more than partisan slugfests where the first casualty was the truth, since opinion pundits did not have to be neutral, and thus, did not come under the close scrutiny that regular news anchors did. Pretty soon, CNN, not to be left behind, got its own partisan hackery act together in the evening. Now, the problem is, the line between opinion and news has become extremely blurred, so when one is watching CNN or Fox, one does not know if the anchor is just reporting on the facts or is giving us his opinion. Thus, in spite of there being a lot of news floating around, people are more uninformed than ever. If you look at it with the view “The people want to watch these pundits on tv, so these shows should go on”, then everythings alright, but basically whats happening is the news media has failed in it’s duty to inform the public. The rise of bloggers and alternative media is a testament to this.
And even when they do show “actual news”, boy is it full of inanity. I remember the day of the Michael Jackson trial verdict, the news channels were giving a running commentary of Jackson’s every action including getting out of his home, into the car, they even followed the car via helicopter, then they were giving a detailed list of people who were arriving for the verdict “Ok so it seems Janet Jackson has arrived, I repeat, Janet has arrived…No no, it is not Janetm it is someone else”. Who the f cares man? How about showing us the kids that are being killed in Iraq instead? That should set people’s priorities straight.
I swear once I saw a news story on the local tv news channel, “Bodies discovered buried in neighbourhood cemetery, investigation underway.”. I’m not making this up.
hey good post! this 24×7 news thing is such a farce : you get a 150 reporters “reporting” the most insignificant and idiotic aspects of a (non) issue. its interesting to think about the kind of censorship and distortion thats possible in such a method of presenting news: so much gets left out so conveniently.
theres also so much emphasis on live reporting, that investigative journalism is just ditched altogether. and since thats a critical part of free press, it seems to me to also be a very dangerous trend.
Uma, you are right, all tv news channels look and sound the same. they have the same kind of programs and anchors… yet each claims to be different and trend setting in some way!
SwB, been good… thanks 🙂
Sunil, you’ve hit it right on the head – I see very little analysis on tv news – digging is always ‘dirty’ and not useful… and there is very little coverage of social or development issues – unless the agenda is political in some way – say, thsi government has been neglecting farmers kind of thing…
Rahul, how did we survive before 24×7 news came into existence? becuase of this, channels are focred to fill in their time with lifestyle features and celebrity interviews. which I certainly can do without…
gawker,“Bodies discovered buried in neighbourhood cemetery, investigation underway.”. rotfl. cannot believe this 🙂
m. selective perception and reporting. hail news!
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