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CNN IBN TV CHANNEL LAUNCHED - REVIEW
CNN-IBN: Old wine in new bottle...
...and new language too. Rajdeep Sardesai's channel takes the path well-trodden by Hindi news channels.
BY JM
29th December 2005
MUMBAI, INDIA
Goof -up:
ibnlive.com beats NASA to spce!
CNN-IBN, the latest assembly line production to hit the country's airwaves, is as good as others already in the game. Or as bad, if that is how you would like to look at it.
The channel piggybacks heavily on Rajdeep Sardesai, who is the channel's editor. Sardesai left NDTV earlier this year to strike out on his own. If you are familiar with the Rajdeep Sardesai brand of journalism on NDTV 24X7, you know what CNN-IBN is like. You don't need to read this review.
CNN-IBN was launched as a TV-18 tie-up with CNN. The launch was very low-key, and few knew that it was on air. A friend from CNBC informed me that it was launched, but the channel did not appear on my TV for a couple of days. Many other eager beavers too were disappointed when it did not appear on the tube. I was not surprised by this, since many new TV channels take some time to appear on TVs. Same was the case with Zoom Television, which too made its debut in 2005. I think it could be a problem at the cable operator's end.
As it turned out, I did not miss much. If someone called it a Rajdeep Sardesai channel, he couldn't be more right. Rajdeep has taken his breathless reporting to his new channel, which makes you feel that the anchor/host/newsreader is saying something of enormous consequence even when it is just mundane stuff.
About starting the channel, Rajdeep Sardesai says in his blog that a voice inside him told him to take a slightly more difficult road, try something different. Looks like the voice did not give him clear directions. He has ended up on the road taken by Hindi news channels much earlier.
CNN-IBN takes the path well-trodden by Hindi news channels like Aaj Tak, Star News and Zee News. The emphasis is on "exclusives", "breaking news", "Only on CNN-IBN" and "live" stories. Maybe in the dog-eat-dog world of our television journalism, it makes sense to create a sense of 'perpetual happening,' even when there may be none.
I am sure they won't agree with me, but I firmly believe that viewers should not be fooled into believing that "news is breaking" even though it may have broken hours ago. For this, I won't blame Sardesai alone. The breaking news virus is already raging in the telecast scene and competition may be forcing newcomers to take the path well-taken. In contrast, foreign news channels use the "breaking news" tag only when the story is actually happening. Our channels prefer to take the anything-goes approach to get eyeballs, while reputed news channels like CNN and BBC telecast with more care, with an eye on long-term credibility and respectability.
Which again makes me wonder: Sardesai is supposed to have a content tieup with CNN. But I am still to see any content on the new channel sourced from CNN. I scoured CNN too, to find if they use any content from IBN. I did not notice any. Is the content sharing only on paper?
On Thursday, for most part of the day, CNN-IBN's anchors were gushing over the discovery of a "mass grave" in Gujarat (ONLY ON CN-IBN) which was found to have eight bodies. Fingers were pointed at the Gujarat government, since the mass grave pointed to a "genocide."
Mass grave? I think the word is misleading here. Recently, investigators found nearly 500 bodies in a mass grave in Srebenica in former Yugoslavia which witnessed massacres during the Bosnian civil war. A total of 1000 bodies were discovered till date in the same village from different mass graves. 460 skulls were recovered from a Rwanda mass grave following civil war. A Polish mass grave contained the remains of over 1600 Jews massacred during World War II.
Now, saying that a Gujarat mass grave contained eight bodies (NDTV reported six) is a little too much. It displayed only a lack of sensitivity on the channel's part and a push for populism. It shows a whatever-it-takes approach to grabbing eyeballs. No one doubts that genocides happened in Gujarat following Godhra. We would believe it, with or without the mass grave masala.
Rajdeep claims that the channel is still in an embryonic stage. For an embryo, CNN-IBN looks quite decent. But it doesn't yet match up to the sheen of an NDTV or a Zoom.
There is something I still can't understand: Are TV professionals bigger than the channels they represent? It would seem so, if one goes by the Sardesai ads aired on CNN-IBN. News channel promos featuring in-house anchors and celebrity-endorsements are an avoidable bore. Whoever puts these ads on air, please have a rethink. A full-page colour newspaper ad on Wednesday showed a gigantic face of Rajdeep Sardesai, saying he would get you the news, whatever it took. I thought the era of MGR cutouts were behind us.
I think it has something to do with our secret desire to find someone to worship. NDTV too resorts to the same idolatry, putting up Prannoy Roy hoardings on channel promos. Avoidable, I say. Why do I never see such annoying self-promotion on any respected western news channel?
If you pardon the breaking-news-bore, out-of-breath reporting, the CNN-IBN Impact self-congratulation and the channel editors' self-promotion, CNN-IBN comes across as an average TV channel, a notch below NDTV 24X7. I am sure the embryo has a long way to go, before it grows up, stands on its legs and punch the rival in the eyes.
Am I rooting for NDTV? Sorry. I am still waiting for a worthy competitor to 24X7. But the embryo has not made the grade. Maybe Times Now will change the rules of the game. Till then, I will stick to NDTV and watch CNN-IBN during breaks.
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