Dear God,
I have been looking up options to get this letter to Prannoy Roy. Twitter and FB give me only so much space. See if you can do something.
Thanks much!
Dear Prannoy Babu,
For the record, I started following 24X7 because your newscasters/scroller didn't yell at me. 24X7 provided the escape route from your competition whose USP is scream to open headlines, scream Breaking news and most importantly, thrust views on the audience. Worse still, at the end of the 9 o'clock broadcast, the head honcho of one of the leading news channels spells out his expert (read useless) advice on the topic that was covered. Yet another channel pits clowns from various quarters, gets them to fight and hurl epithets while the opinionated facilitator would mouth "Why can't you be honest?"
Now your channel did two things initially which attracted my patronage - did not sell news/opinions to me and most importantly, didn't yell at me. Also, you reserved your services for genuine exclusives.
It is with regret now though that I write to you about the failing standards at 24X7 too. Hitherto, your trump card is where my disgust starts. She seems to think of herself as the conscience keeper of the nation. We the people are mighty frustrated with an opinionated facilitator who derides panelists if their thoughts are not populist and who compulsively opines after every panelist's/participant's statement. In-a-sense is oft abused especially when her statements open and close with it. Her style of reporting is passe and cliched at best. Take for instance, her show on Robert Vadra. The questions asked were based on fictitious ideas. Hardly researched, it is inconsequential to the audience if he is ready to join politics yet or what his wife, mom-in-law and brother-in-law think of his foray. Throughout the course of the show, she kept pressing on questions based purely on conjectures and media's imagination. Or that episode covering 10 years of Godhra - she wipes tears while empathizing with the victim and family. Reporting ethics! Hello!?!?!
All of your newscasters are stylized on the aforementioned she, 'in-a-sense'. So much so that I have observed that some of your newscasters openly mimic her statements and posture on various shows. Highly distracting to say the least, I lose focus on news items and/or the panelists' views.
Sir, a lot of stress is being laid on content, material and self-restraint. While that continues to be a challenge across most leading news channels in our country, I feel that is still secondary to the standard of newscasters. Barring a noteworthy few (Keshulay Bhattacharjee, Nidhi Razdan, Radhika Iyer, Priyanka Kakodkar and Pallav Bagla), I am afraid the rest are either clones or just dumb bimbettes with no prior contextual knowledge of a subject. Pronunciations, especially regional, sound pathetic coming from some of these clowns. A few of the newscasters leave long interludes between two words leaving one to wonder if they were choked. A few others lay unnecessary stress on words that hardly need any. Let's reserve content for another day. But may I interest you with an earlier precis here and a fellow blogger's thoughts here
A generation has grown up watching a classy Prannoy casting news in a manner exclusive to him alone. That be the case, is it unfair to expect his channel to be modelled after him? I do not know of your interest in day-to-day operations but if you take feedback seriously and would like to champion the cause of journalism (in its truest form), it is time for you to sit up, take notice and bring about a change in your system
I remain, yours sincerely.
I have been looking up options to get this letter to Prannoy Roy. Twitter and FB give me only so much space. See if you can do something.
Thanks much!
Dear Prannoy Babu,
For the record, I started following 24X7 because your newscasters/scroller didn't yell at me. 24X7 provided the escape route from your competition whose USP is scream to open headlines, scream Breaking news and most importantly, thrust views on the audience. Worse still, at the end of the 9 o'clock broadcast, the head honcho of one of the leading news channels spells out his expert (read useless) advice on the topic that was covered. Yet another channel pits clowns from various quarters, gets them to fight and hurl epithets while the opinionated facilitator would mouth "Why can't you be honest?"
Now your channel did two things initially which attracted my patronage - did not sell news/opinions to me and most importantly, didn't yell at me. Also, you reserved your services for genuine exclusives.
It is with regret now though that I write to you about the failing standards at 24X7 too. Hitherto, your trump card is where my disgust starts. She seems to think of herself as the conscience keeper of the nation. We the people are mighty frustrated with an opinionated facilitator who derides panelists if their thoughts are not populist and who compulsively opines after every panelist's/participant's statement. In-a-sense is oft abused especially when her statements open and close with it. Her style of reporting is passe and cliched at best. Take for instance, her show on Robert Vadra. The questions asked were based on fictitious ideas. Hardly researched, it is inconsequential to the audience if he is ready to join politics yet or what his wife, mom-in-law and brother-in-law think of his foray. Throughout the course of the show, she kept pressing on questions based purely on conjectures and media's imagination. Or that episode covering 10 years of Godhra - she wipes tears while empathizing with the victim and family. Reporting ethics! Hello!?!?!
All of your newscasters are stylized on the aforementioned she, 'in-a-sense'. So much so that I have observed that some of your newscasters openly mimic her statements and posture on various shows. Highly distracting to say the least, I lose focus on news items and/or the panelists' views.
Sir, a lot of stress is being laid on content, material and self-restraint. While that continues to be a challenge across most leading news channels in our country, I feel that is still secondary to the standard of newscasters. Barring a noteworthy few (Keshulay Bhattacharjee, Nidhi Razdan, Radhika Iyer, Priyanka Kakodkar and Pallav Bagla), I am afraid the rest are either clones or just dumb bimbettes with no prior contextual knowledge of a subject. Pronunciations, especially regional, sound pathetic coming from some of these clowns. A few of the newscasters leave long interludes between two words leaving one to wonder if they were choked. A few others lay unnecessary stress on words that hardly need any. Let's reserve content for another day. But may I interest you with an earlier precis here and a fellow blogger's thoughts here
A generation has grown up watching a classy Prannoy casting news in a manner exclusive to him alone. That be the case, is it unfair to expect his channel to be modelled after him? I do not know of your interest in day-to-day operations but if you take feedback seriously and would like to champion the cause of journalism (in its truest form), it is time for you to sit up, take notice and bring about a change in your system
I remain, yours sincerely.
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