Venkat, asking those sort of questions usually sets me off on a rant :) maybe a separate thread on that. But for now: 1. News in channels is usually selected on - stories in newspapers, events and the competition. There's a lot of emphasis on at least one 'breaking news' story in every 'news wheel' which is basically every 15 minutes. Basically that puts a lot of pressure on reporters to 'break' stories and 'own the story' and 'drive the conversation'. I can go on and on, but the bottomline is: incentives for everybody are so skewed that the stuff that comes out is utter horse shit. 2. There's a lot of pressure to ensure people stick to the channel. The only way to do that is to pull an Arnab. most anchors can't (and won't) do that). only news x is trying to use that template. The rest of the channels are flailing about. They are so ripe for content disruption right now. 3. I was numbed because as an anchor I was required to do al of the above and more. What really killed it for me was 26/11 when we were required to sustain non-stop coverage of the attacks for 48 hours, without breaks. So we took turns as anchors, basically saying the same thing over and over again. 2008 was really when things got worse. Reporting was cut short. People realised it is cheapest to call 4 guests to a studio and have a shouting match. I can go on and on.... Anyway, there are a lot of great people in tv still, and who knows, change might be round the corner.
Amit - hello! I should tell you - your blog was responsible for sparking my interest in economics, Lee Child and James Elroy, and much more. Still occasionally pop in to read it. On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 10:30 PM Amit Varma <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 9:53 PM, Venkatesh H R <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Used > > to be a big reader of India Uncut, which I guess you designed? > > > > Ooh. Welcome to Silk (though I'm a lurker myself mostly...) > > > -- > Amit Varma > http://www.indiauncut.com > http://www.twitter.com/amitvarma >
