I write this after a two-month-long hibernation, after seeing a hot new blog featuring inside bitching and gossip on India's English language TV news channels....by and large this seems to be some slanging match between CNN-IBN and NDTV, with have-beens, wannabes and anonymous bystanders providing some fine amusement. Check this out:
http://warfornews.blogspot.com
It is essentially a storm in a teacup involving an incestuous minority of TV journos....in a nation of one billion people, they are a small number and talk to a small number, but there is a lot of good writing and criticism mixing with plain ole bitching, point-scoring and subtle lobbying on the blog. There is some people-like-us charm in all this.
The implications of this blog--which some argue is a spin promotion for a newbie channel--are enormous. Irrespective of who does it and what it carries, the blog shows what kind of criticism journalists and media barons will have to face in the coming days. There is a huge peer-to-peer commenting that is replacing old boss-speak, and insecurities are a part of the life in which stress hormones would have been better spent on sources and issues.
They are not discussing TRPs the way they should be....only goes to show that journos, when the cows come home, prefer mutual bitchery to objective analysis of their work. We need a third umpire on this one.
Show me the numbers, dude!
