But what about TRP? What about those unknown faces with those anonymous meters hooked on to their TV sets? Would they have found 'The Wait for Water" TRPable? If not how have these stories from the heart of desert country made any difference at all? Well, at the end of the day content is king. Cutting edge content gives an aggressive good feel to a media platform. It builds the 'well-being' of a company. It gives the channel or newspaper a 'feel good factor'. In the Faber Book of Reportage, Prof. John Carey wrote: "Reportage provides modern man, too, with a release from his trivial routines, and a habitual daily illusion of communication with a reality greater than himself." This is as good a business proposition as a rule of thumb for judging content as well.
How many middle class homes, "our" kind of homes, "OUR" audience sacrificed tomatoes because the prices have gone up? And what about fundamental questions like why was the shortage not foreseen? What was National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) doing? CNN-IBN's Special Investigation Team had exposed a scam of over Rs 5,000 crore of tax payers money in NAFED, but the clean-up in NAFED is yet to begin because Sharad Pawar is busy playing politics in Maharashtra. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couldn't hide his frustration with the gross mismanagement of the agriculture sector during his recent visit to Mumbai. He showed in which direction the wind is blowing when he said adequate attention is not being paid to the agriculture sector.
Can't we tell "OUR" viewers that while you continue to buy your vegetables despite cribbing about rising prices, do you know where this price rise is stemming from? Isn't this is a perfectly TRPable story? I would hazard a guess that not many homes in middle class India would have decided to do away with the costly Tomatoes. What "reality" was the media alluding to? Likewise in the Rakhi Sawant case what was this "greater reality" that one was trying to project for the modern and urban men and women, "OUR" audience? Or in the Jet-Sahara divorce we only talked of a marriage gone sour even before coitus, but did not connect with the "greater reality" or even "illusion" of its implications.
I have often been told there is no hard evidence to show that special investigations and stings have any impact on TRP. Well, it depends on how one is reading statistics, because it can be read in more ways than one. Investigative journalism makes the channel attractive. It enables the channel to garner good wishes and viewers in the long term. A random survey of viewing choices can never measure a channel's quality of reportage and its credibility. There is no way one can gather data on aspects of trust and integrity, again crucial reasons why in the long term these are as valuable to a channel's commercial interests as TRPs.
first published:June 24, 2006, 19:13 ISTlast updated:June 24, 2006, 19:13 IST
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News has slowly morphed into an illegitimate child of information. There is a surfeit of information ready to be picked up off-the-information highway and in that clutter journalism is loosing its meaning. We talk of rising price of Tomatoes, but are completely amnesiac of the agrarian crisis that 70 per cent of India is enveloped in. "They" don't interest us because "they" don't matter to "our" audience. One refreshing way of making "their" stories mainstream is to emulate the brilliant story telling of 'The Wait for Water" series on CNN-IBN. This is phenomenal display of journalistic enterprise by Rupashree Nanda and Rajesh Bhardwaj.
But what about TRP? What about those unknown faces with those anonymous meters hooked on to their TV sets? Would they have found 'The Wait for Water" TRPable? If not how have these stories from the heart of desert country made any difference at all? Well, at the end of the day content is king. Cutting edge content gives an aggressive good feel to a media platform. It builds the 'well-being' of a company. It gives the channel or newspaper a 'feel good factor'. In the Faber Book of Reportage, Prof. John Carey wrote: "Reportage provides modern man, too, with a release from his trivial routines, and a habitual daily illusion of communication with a reality greater than himself." This is as good a business proposition as a rule of thumb for judging content as well.
How many middle class homes, "our" kind of homes, "OUR" audience sacrificed tomatoes because the prices have gone up? And what about fundamental questions like why was the shortage not foreseen? What was National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) doing? CNN-IBN's Special Investigation Team had exposed a scam of over Rs 5,000 crore of tax payers money in NAFED, but the clean-up in NAFED is yet to begin because Sharad Pawar is busy playing politics in Maharashtra. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couldn't hide his frustration with the gross mismanagement of the agriculture sector during his recent visit to Mumbai. He showed in which direction the wind is blowing when he said adequate attention is not being paid to the agriculture sector.
Can't we tell "OUR" viewers that while you continue to buy your vegetables despite cribbing about rising prices, do you know where this price rise is stemming from? Isn't this is a perfectly TRPable story? I would hazard a guess that not many homes in middle class India would have decided to do away with the costly Tomatoes. What "reality" was the media alluding to? Likewise in the Rakhi Sawant case what was this "greater reality" that one was trying to project for the modern and urban men and women, "OUR" audience? Or in the Jet-Sahara divorce we only talked of a marriage gone sour even before coitus, but did not connect with the "greater reality" or even "illusion" of its implications.
I have often been told there is no hard evidence to show that special investigations and stings have any impact on TRP. Well, it depends on how one is reading statistics, because it can be read in more ways than one. Investigative journalism makes the channel attractive. It enables the channel to garner good wishes and viewers in the long term. A random survey of viewing choices can never measure a channel's quality of reportage and its credibility. There is no way one can gather data on aspects of trust and integrity, again crucial reasons why in the long term these are as valuable to a channel's commercial interests as TRPs.
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