Observing Television – A Blog on Broadcast Media

There is a huge difference in the way Hindi and English TV News Channels in India present news. In Hindi the emphasis is on entertainment and sensationalism whereas the English Channels try to bring news in the traditional more facts orientated way. The reasons for this differential approach is many. In the words of Sudhir Choudhary, Editor in Chief of Live India one of the Hindi News channels, the channel caters to what its audience is looking for. If they want more news on Rakhee Sawant (A popular dancer, who is known amongst her audience because of her histrionics and her ability to sensationalize anything that she does), than the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s visit to China, the channel will not mind showing the same.

The amount of entertainment stuff in a Hindi news channels in some estimates is much more than News. Of course one would wonder whether the channel in that case should be called a news channel in the first place. Further channel monitoring agencies say that the people viewing Hindi News Channels prefer only entertainment programmes. According to Mr. Choudhary the ratings are four times higher in an entertainment programme in comparison to news programmes.

Of course there is a constant conflict between what the sales team in such a channel wants and what the editors would like to see on air.

Once you start working in a television news channel, you would be hit by different kinds of jargon. Generally, you may not realise that you are imbibing all these jargon as you concentrate on your job.  Words such as “Sound Bite”, “Out of Vision or OOV”, “Anchor Read”, “Package”, “VSAT” etc. become words of common parlance.   Then there are other words such as “PTC or Piece to Camera”, “Phone in”, etc.

When you take a step back and want to teach the same, the easiest method is to follow the channels.  Create a newsroom and let everybody be involved.  However, this may not be feasible and one would need to define this as a teacher.  Many times, one is left wondering whether television is all about jargon.  In reality, one has to call everything by a name otherwise you may not know what the person is referring to.  For instance a “Run Order”, is the list of stories that have been scheduled for a news programme.

While working in different channels I have also come across  jargon which sound very different:  For instance SOENG:  “Sound Over Electronic News Gathering”, ENG: “Electronic News Gathering”, “Dry Anchor”, “Wet Anchor”.  Watchout for some of these definitions in the blog.

Print journalists generally scoff at the writing skills of a television journalist. There is some merit in what the people from print believe, a television journalist writes for the ears whereas the print journalist writes for the eyes. There is no necessity (as far as the voice over script is concerned) to ensure that punctuations are carefully put down. Hence, not surprisingly many TV reporters start making many punctuation errors. They may not differentiate between “its” and “it’s”. Many do not believe in putting capitals even in case of a noun. With the coming in of the SMS age some may use “how r u?” style of writing. Sometimes an ungrammatical sentence looks good when delivered in the right voice over style. And at times a TV script ends up having many full stops which may not make sense in print (Eg: The Indian team was unhappy….. they believed they have been unfairly targeted). Once a television journalist is used to this style of writing, he may find this method an easy way to express his thoughts. In the last few years however, a significant change has come in this direction. The television screen for a news channel today is filled with lots of written material. Breaking news, Flash News, News tickers, advertisements, graphic plate for unwritten quotes, everything requires material to be written on the screen. Obviously, one cannot afford to make any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes here. Suddenly, the television journalist today has to think like a print journalist. So multi-skilling is probably the answer for future. Look out for the next blog on multi-skilling.

In a television world which aims to get as many viewers as possible, crossing the ethical line becomes a necessity many times for television channels. For the teacher however, the dilemma becomes all the more complicated as students want to know what is wrong in crossing the ethical line when professional channels are doing that. The questions may range from asking about a specific instance to checking the veracity of what is being taught. One student for instance asked a very blunt question to me: “I am told all students have to unlearn what is being taught in a Mass communication institute as they join a news channel”. Well! even though one cannot take the responsibility of the entire fraternity of journalism teachers, however to answer the above question, there are many aspects. One there is a style book which every channel follows this may be different for different channels. The cliche “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”, may also work here. On the other hand there is also the problem of the ideal situation. If you see a person dying after riots will you help him or shoot him dying. Though 9 out of 10 people may agree that the man has to be saved…a channel boss may wonder why were you helping the person while the others were shooting the story. In short, teaching ethics even as many channels turn a blind

Every year Doordarshan the Indian National Broadcaster covers the Republic Day Function. A national event held at the capital of the country New Delhi. Any television professional watching this coverage often is very critical of the coverage, ranging from the poor quality of coverage to bad live vision mixing. The regularity with which crucial moments get missed has often been highlighted. This year however, the coverage has been comparatively better. Not only have such misses been less, it seems the crew knew what to expect. There were better angles in which the cameras were placed and the shot sizes were better too. From the technical point of view one felt good about the coverage. Despite rising security concerns the cameras were able to get in the right position to capture the shots. The weather gods were equally good and the fog and mist which generally covers India Gate and Rajpat (The road in which the main march happens) were absent. As usual Doordarshan had cameras on top of India Gate to cover an aerial view of the event. The entire Rajpat could be seen clearly. The disappointment however was the commentary. The retired defence personnel used for the live commentary were not able to keep pace with the changing visuals. In fact there did not seem to be much coordination between the two groups. Of course it wasn’t that the commentary was always going wrong… the professionals used for the purpose however did a better job. So in all it was a better coverage in comparison to the previous years. Even as we love to criticize the govt. channel year after year, it was one of those performances which was worth praising.