What Indian TV Channels Lack Avinash Pandey, Director, ABO News; Earlier with Star News

Avinash Pandey Star News

India has a large number of TV Channels and one of the largest TV viewers in the world. This makes the Indian TV broadcasting industry a lucrative one. That said, there is a lot to be desired in the quality of programmes broadcasted by TV channels in India. This ultimately affects the viewership of Indian TV broadcasting and they are not able to exploit the full potential of the TV viewership in India. In this article we are going to see what kind of improvements can be made in the Indian TV programmes so that they can rep the harvest of the large TV viewership in India.

Indian TV channels have a flood of 24x7 news channels, where the viewers are bombarded with incessant news headlines. However, if one looks at the quality of news, there is much to be desired in the Indian TV news broadcast. This has come for international criticism in recent times and if Indian TV news channels don’t pay attention to it, they are going to lose to the more sophisticated international news channels which are also venturing in Indian languages, especially in Hindi now. First, there is almost no global news on the Indian TV news channels. Whatever little is there has been taken from the international news agencies or channels. It is deplorable that these multitudes of Indian TV channels are not able to exploit the enormous potential of global news and their analysis by having trained journalists across the global destinations. With India emerging as a major rising power on the global platform it is absolutely essential that Indian TV channels have intelligent, sophisticated and analytical presentations of global news for the large Indian TV audience. Second, the oriented of news on the Indian TV channels is extremely Delhi- centric and in the regional centers, they are focused on the major cities of the states. This leaves out the vast population of India out of news coverage. It is essentially a waste of enormous TV channel’s news reporting resources that with hundreds, perhaps thousands of TV news channels, we don’t have adequate news coverage of the local regions of India. Looking at the Indian TV news channels, it appears as though Delhi is the only place where events are taking place. The truth is that Delhi does not even represent the whole of India, because there is so much of diversity across India. Delhi is just a minuscule part of it. One has to travel across India to understand the significance of this lack in the Indian TV news channels. Third, the presentation of news tends to be sensational rather than informative and intelligently analytical. This makes the news presentation look like hastily and ill- conceptualized programmes. We have large number of news channels but perhaps not a single one that matches the international standards in news presentation. This means we are not counted as major news broadcasting agencies on the global platform and we are wasting our news presentation resources. Fourth, the panel discussions are deplorable. It is wrongly thought that if the host and the guests engage in incessant verbal fights it provides entertainment and increases the rating of the programme. The truth is that the viewer gets offended by such waste of their precious time in which they don’t learn anything about the various dimensions of the topic being discussed by a panel. They may watch it for a few minutes and then they switch the channel. The panel discussion should be well-oriented and everyone should present their views in an analytical and polite manner. Any international channel will testify to the value of well- organized and well-discussed panel discussions on their channels, which are extremely popular.

The basic lesson that we learn from this is that TV channels should treat their viewers as intelligent people who can watch and enjoy intelligent, analytical and critical programmes. They have their own opinions on the various topics being covered in the news and in the panel discussions. Hence, they want to know about the world and about the local regions of India in an intelligent manner, not in a highly sensationalized manner. This does affect the viewership and the international channels are a testimony that they have gone past this stage and have begun presenting their programmes in an intelligent, sophisticated manner and it has increase their popularity. If the Indian TV Channels want to survive in this highly competitive world, they have to abandon this sensationalist approach oriented towards Delhi. 

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