Thursday, January 19, 2006

Faces of India??!!!

This Bangalorean morning started with a hot air of political news.
Kumarasamy Gowda son of the former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda dumps his father for the chair to rule the South Indian state of Karnataka coalition with the Opposition BJP
But what I am going to write is really not on the political side but on the media.

Last evening, after a tiring day, off from work, I switched on my TV to browse the channels as usual. When I started to hear some crackers around my house, I was left with no clue and turned to TV news channels to figure out what was happening around.

A State’s government tumbling overnight is really hot and breaking news and only the regional news channels were telecasting this news. I switched to the Other English news channels which portray themselves as they are the faces of India and they are the representatives of India. To talk about a few, NDTV did have a little coverage with only the news text running at the bottom and CNN-IBN nothing at all.

This morning on my way to office in the city of Bangalore, I saw a big banner for an ad of CNN-IBN. That seemed so funny to me. . I wondered, if these people cannot cover their news of a particular region then what’s the point in advertising their news channel in that region? These channels always tend to feel that the political capital and the financial capital of India are the only places in India. When they claim that they represent India, ridiculously, they do mean that they represent these two cities only.


Among the Educated - News reading - News Channel watching population on India Considerable amount is in South. And this is not just for the sake of words. But I really do not find any reason for the News Channels to just focus more North and dump the south. Being a south Indian I had always felt the kind of apathy, Central Government and Ministers show on south. Does it have to be the same kind of behavior with News Channels also?

Meanwhile the Regional Media in South focuses on the spreading its tentacles to the other states and other foreign countries but not on the quality of the news they provide the people. Regional news channels focus more on the local news –Which-actress-married-which-director-and-Which-leader-cursed-which-leader – kind of news. They don’t really care on what’s going on in the nation. When we look at the amount of depth given to news related to important happenings in the central government it’s very shallow... and the same junk news is telecast in foreign countries also. This is really not the level of Quality in News NRIs expect from the very popular- wide spread media networks.

These Regional channels focus on improving the Quality of the picture and video they provide and the Quality of new they give people. And Other English news channels which focus more on North Indian News turn more towards south only when Bill Gates tasted a chutney with appam or some foreign delegates visit Infosys,Bangalore.

There's lot to be done by the media to the south...Didn't they see the potholes in the Bangalorean Main roads? Don’t they see newer Industries coming up in Chennai? Do any of us know what the headlines in Andhrapradesh and Kerala are?

Can News Channels take a New Year’s resolution at least the next year...if your sights are too tightly tied to a single thing for this year!!!.

2 comments:

Deeps said...

WOW!!!! Superb observation and what you say is partially true, according to me...
I saw the 2030hrs and 2100hrs news on NDTV and Headlines Today (I didnt see CNN-IBN) There they covered about the Karnataka govt politics news as the first news item in them...though it was not exhaustive as the Kannada news channels, it was ok coverage...
But overall speaking, i agree with you...As i said b4, great observation! :)

£ijo Isac said...

You are right . Feel that there is a lot of scope for regional news channels in Karnataka , TN and Andhra which focuses on issues that you have raised .Lessons can be learned from the success of Indiavision in Kerala.