Detoxing news
In the current news ecology the channels have created for themselves, it really does not matter whether the TAM reports are given out every minute or every six months.
The broadcasters’ associations should get together,play the recordings of their own bulletins, and judge for themselves if what they do is news, says PADMAJA SHAW
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The latest red herring floating around in the commercial news television circles is the need or otherwise of reporting TAM figures every week. Looking at the reactions of the industry seniors both from advertising and the channels, one is left wondering at the chasm between the views of the two sides. Advertising guys say that weekly reporting of ratings helps them in careful purchase of media time and to be more responsive. The channel bosses have said that the reason for deteriorating news content on television really is the pressure of weekly TAM reports.
Let us look at the advertising end first. Is the advertising industry placing its investments on programmes with as much rigour and attention to detail as it is claiming to? To take an example, the serial ‘Chandramukhi’ (one of the most violent shows) on ETV in Telugu has not figured among the top 5 for a very long time. The serial has been on the channel at the 8 to 8.30 pm slot for over 4 years now. There is an array of products that are advertised on this serial. The average of seven to eight and half minutes of advertising on the half hour serial have programme promos, ads for cars (Ford Fiesta, Tata Aria), up-market razors (Gillette), Horlicks (biscuits and drinks), Kellogs oats, baby care products (Johnsons), Olx.com (online trading site), aging lotion (Olay), detergents (Nirma, Surf), Nokia and Samsung mobiles, hair oils (Parachute and Ashwini), fairness creams (Fairever), toilet cleaners (Domex), finance companies (Muthoot), PSAs on government schemes and cancer from tobacco chewing etc. As can be seen, several of the products are up-market branded products, some are international brands. And, this is just a sampling from 5 episodes. Whatever the price deal for advertising that is offered by the channel, a show of this kind should have disappeared from the channel for the kind of ratings it pulls in if the advertising decisions were as rigorous as they are made out to be.
However, one could argue that poor quality shows continue to garner advertising support in the serials space because the storylines and the thematic core of the programme drives the decision to bet on a programme in the long run. But this logic cannot work with the news channels and their content. News content is inherently unpredictable. The content changes for every viewing day. If there has been a major event, the impact of it should be pretty much the same for all channels. On such a day, everyone’s viewership goes up, unless one channel ends up providing something that the others are unable to. What’s more, a channel that provides good coverage of one story because of its special strengths of a good reporter/ground links/infrastructure in the area, may not succeed with other stories.
The advertiser essentially is chasing good ratings which are too fickle. Without really hair-splitting on how the TAM data itself is gathered, it is quite clear that it is not the substance of the news being transmitted (which is common mostly for all channels) but the bells and whistles a channel provides that appears to guide the ratings/advertisers. It seems it is the use of garish and loud graphics, sensational fast changing captions, the theatrics and melodrama contributed by the anchors that seems to drive the ratings.
Most of these practices are unprofessional and detract from the information function of the news. With the arrival of 24x7 news channels, the time slots for news have increased from twenty minutes to an hour. And to fill this hour-long slot, the channels resort to ‘talking points’ and discussions during the news-hour, which are a license to the anchors to air their opinions aggressively and push their political and business agendas. All the news channels as a synchronised kangaroo mob will hold their kangaroo courts to decide guilt or innocence even as the courts are examining the cases. ‘Is XYZ guilty of murder?’; ‘Should death penalty process be expedited in special cases?’; ‘Is Advani the next PM?’; ‘Is NarendraModi looking for a bigger role on the national scene?’ they will ask grandiosely in the name of the people of India. But somehow, the same people of India do not wish to know the details of CAG report on KG basin and Reliance industries.
Every important issue is pitched as a personal battle of ego between two people, clash of giants sometimes, sometimes as “David versus Goliath’. ‘Anna vs Govt’ with the images of Anna and the PM facing off visually, when the issue really was about an effective Lok Pal Bill.‘Mani vsMaken’, when Mani Shankar Aiyer was raising important issues about the need for a policy framework for sports administration. In the latter case, the channels chose to drag down the debate to pointless denigration of reputed educational institutions by highlighting asides and ignoring the main issue.
In channels like the BBC, the news slot will not have discussions from opposite points of view. It may have sound bites or expert views from single authoritative sources and updates on information from the ground. The discussion programmes with varied points of view are separate kinds of programme anchored by different set of individuals not the news anchors who present the news.
In fact, several of the well-regarded news organizations explicitly discourage their anchors and newspersons from expressing their likes and dislikes and political preferences through even the social media like ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’. This they feel will undermine their image as impartial providers of news/ information in the public eye. In India, newspersons are eager to flaunt their opinions on social media persistently, boxing themselves into little corners of rigid opinion through open discussions with friends and admirers.
As has been pointed out by media experts, the English news channels garner low ratings but occupy larger mind space. The low ratings have not prevented the channels from attracting advertising and corporate support. As in the case of general entertainment, the ad agencies continue to patronise low performers also. It is not as if the ad support is withdrawn. There may be a marginal downgrading of price. For instance, a local channel news chief says, the top ranking channels get Rs 3000 for 10 second slot while the lower rated channels can command Rs 2000 for the same. The ad bookings are done for a month in any case and come up for negotiation every month. There is no immediate impact of weekly ratings.
In some senses, the advertising industry seems to incentivise poor ratings performance both in GEC and news segments. The channels continue to get advertising support to an extent. In the regional market, since either business houses or political leaders own the channels, the objective of the channels is not to be profit centres but to be sources of political clout.
Leo Bogart (1976), the ratings guru, in an article titled ‘Mass advertising: the message, not the medium’, discusses this albeit in a different context. He says, “Changes in the media, with all their tremendous consequences for the flow of information and the character of public taste, are not made by popular request. They do not reflect the ‘democracy of the marketplace.’ Rather they result from the decisions made either directly by advertising buyers or by media managements anticipating advertiser demands; … the mistakes made as a result of this process may not hurt the advertiser, since his competitors are probably making the same mistakes, but they do have serious consequences for the mass media, and for society.”
As an optimist about media and their role in democracy, here’s what one hopes for. In the current news ecology the channels have created for themselves, it really does not matter whether the TAM reports are given out every minute or every six months. The broadcasters’ associations should get together,play the recordings of their own bulletins and judge for themselves if what they do is news. By agreeing to do the following, the channels will be free of the tyranny of ratings:
· Recognise that news is not like general entertainment. Its public purpose remit is actually providing the news channels with the cloak of immunity under free speech clauses of the Constitution.
· Prohibit the use of music (film or otherwise) to embellish mood in the edited packages in their news bulletins.
· Prohibit long, free-for-all discussions on cooked up issues
· Prohibit speculative discussions that attempt to decipher/predict the future
· Better train their anchors/field reporters on the distinction between fact and opinion
· Confine themselves to reporting facts without hyper-intense graphics and captions with loud colours
· Last but not the least, if they want a genuine make-over of image, they should park all the ‘star’ newscasters on a loop-line and introduce fresh blood who are professionally trained (as in, understand what is news), and more importantly, those who are insulated from the political-corporate spheres of influence.
The NBA should try developing a code that restrains the news channels from some of their current practices. The broadcast code of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry should define news format and treat all other styles of presentation as fiction. It needs some courage to voluntarily subject oneself to the detoxification process. One hopes the industry discovers that courage within itself.