In October 1989, when The Hindu‘s then associate editor, N. Ram, was stopped in his tracks by his uncle and editor, G. Kasturi, from publishing the third part of an investigation into the Bofors gun deal, Ram found a novel method of getting the story out. He called a press conference and handed out the…
Tag Archives: NDTV 24×7
‘TV is manufacturing news & consent for State’
Former NDTV and Headlines Today reporter Sandeep Bhushan, now an academic at the Jamia Millia Islamia, in the Economic & Political Weekly: “The news studio has become the site for “manufacturing” news and consent on behalf of the beleaguered state. This is largely the product of an unprecedented financial crisis which has threatened media’s advertisement-based…
Now, NewsX says it is the ‘No.1 English channel’
If our TV stations cannot even put out numbers of their viewership which have a faint whiff of credibility, can they real put out news and views that news consumers can trust and believe? NewsX, the news channel which has already seen three sets of owners since its launch, is running crawlers on its screens…
Headlines Today claims it’s overtaken Times Now
In a non-stop season of scams, you would expect television watchers to switch on private TV stations to get the plain, unvarnished truth? Well, think again. Hindustan Times once again reports that the most-watched news shows between 8 pm and 10 pm are those on the state-owned Doordarshan News. The paper reports that the 8…
India’s most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is…
India’s most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is, pinch yourself, DD News! Hindustan Times reports in its gossip columns that News Night: “the primetime news show [on DD News] between 9 pm and 10 pm topped the TAM ratings last week with 66% market share, four times the channel which comes next.” Interesting, if…
‘Arnab Goswami is corrective to babalog media’
Bangalore, the home of City Tab, India’s original weekly tabloid, now has a new weekly: Talk. Edited by former Indian Express and Yahoo! staffer S.R. Ramakrishna, Talk also features a weekly satire page called Ayyotoons, illustrated by Satish Acharya. The latest issue features Times Now* editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami. *** At the turn of 2012, the…
Lots of people watch Lok Sabha TV. Surprised?
It doesn’t look pretty when a free-to-air public service broadcaster gets into the TRP race. Lok Sabha TV, the channel of the lower house of Parliament, has issued newspaper advertisements through the audio-visual publicity department (DAVP) of the government, of the viewership commanded by it in Delhi during the first week of March—when the results…
Every channel is a winner in great poll race
For politicians, an election is a loaded game: there is one winner and the rest are losers. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Unless, of course, it is a hung parliament or assembly. Not so for those in the business of capturing their victories and defeats. All three of India’s leading English news channels are…
Will RIL-TV18-ETV deal win SEBI, CCI approval?
PRITAM SENGUPTA in New Delhi and KEERTHI PRATIPATI in Hyderabad write: Media criticism in India, especially in the so-called mainstream media, has never been much to write home about. Operating on the principle that writing on another media house or media professional means exposing yourself to the same danger in the future, proprietors, promoters and…
Anna Hazare: 17 TV interviews over 11 hours
Exclusive interview with Barkha Dutt on NDTV 24×7. Exclusive interview with Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN. Exclusive interview with Rahul Kanwal on Headlines Today. “Live” exclusive interview with Arnab Goswami at “8.23 pm” on Times Now…. It was all in a day’s work for anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare on Tuesday, 13 September, as he rolled out…
‘Zee is the only news channel making money’
The mention of TV news in India brings up the usual names among news aficionados—Times Now, NDTV 24×7 and NDTV India, Aaj Tak and Headlines Today, CNN-IBN and IBN Awaaz, et al. But there is another player in the ring from India’s oldest satellite network. And Zee News, says its CEO Punit Goenka, is the…
Khushwant Singh stands up for Barkha Dutt, again
For the second time in five months, Khushwant Singh, the former editor of the now-defunct Illustrated Weekly of India, stands up for the beleaguered NDTV group editor and anchor, Barkha Dutt, in Hindustan Times: “I shudder to think what would be left of Indian television if Barkha Dutt decides to call it a day. “For…
Express, NDTV, Tehelka, HT & the Bhushans
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Three weeks ago, Tehelka magazine ran a profile on the father and son lawyer-pair, Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan, who are on the Lokpal drafting committee. Authored by Rohini Mohan, the piece inter alia repeated the canard that had been artfully spread about the Bhushans: that they had been…
Shekhar Gupta on journalists in Radia tapes
The May issue of the men’s fashion magazine, GQ (for Gentleman’s Quarterly), has a six-page interview with Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Indian Express and host of the NDTV 24×7 interview programme Walk the Talk. In a cover-mention titled “Is the Indian Express running out of steam?”, Gupta takes questions from the adman-columnist Anil Thakraney…
Indian Express, NDTV & the “scoop” that wasn’t
*** PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: There has been a brief hiatus to the “crude and disgusting character assassination” of the father-son lawyer-pair of Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan, after the Union government made it clear the insinuations would not sway the composition or functioning of the committee to draft the Lokpal bill. Now,…
Swami Agnivesh has a question for Barkha Dutt
A champagne moment of live television, 39 minutes and 48 seconds into NDTV’s Buck Stops Here show on Wednesday, April 20, the year of the lord 2011. Star-anchor Barkha Dutt goes on and on about whether Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan should continue to stay as civil society representatives on the Lokpal drafting committee given…
Vir Sanghvi & Barkha Dutt: “We were targeted”
Society, the monthly lifestyle magazine of the Magna group owned by Nari Hira, has a cover story on Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt in its January 2011 issue. For the first time, the two journalists most affected by the Niira Radia tapes, appear on the same platform. In his 3-page interview, Sanghvi states: “I am…
When Rajdeep Sardesai got it left, right & centre
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: There were two “key takeaways”—as TV anchors remind us every night, two “key takeaways”—from the post-Niira Radia chintan baithak organised by the Editors Guild of India, the Press Club of India, and the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC) in New Delhi on Friday. The first takeaway is what the…
Everybody loves a nice mutual admiration club
Ratan Tata, the bossman of Tata Sons in the middle of the 2G spectrum allocation scam following the outing of the tapes of the conversations of his chief lobbyist Niira Radia, has given an interview to Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Indian Express and host of NDTV’s interview programme, Walk the Talk. The text of…
‘Indian media doesn’t value factual reporting’
Of all the documentaries built around the November 26, 2008 siege of Bombay, none has quite matched the buzz created by Dan Reed for Channel 4. Partly because it was the first of the lot; largely because it contained eyepopping footage including of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab (in picture) being interrogated. In an…
IJR 