No. That is because the Indian news industry's response to the challenges it faces - rising costs, falling quality, stagnating revenues and migrating audiences - has been short-sighted as usual. The industry has consistently looked for quick fixes, like this temporary jump in ad revenues or a special reprieve from the 12 minutes per hour advertising limit, to buffer revenues instead of tackling the rot that is setting into the business ethically, creatively and commercially.
This column will deal only with the creative and commercial challenges that the news industry in India faces, across TV, print, radio or online.
The global news industry has been experimenting with everything from paywalls to online retail to tackle rising costs and migrating audiences and revenues. The one thing that has proven to be a good first step is integrated newsrooms. These not only help cut costs but also give news brands the tools to listen to what audiences want, where and when they want it and to respond to it quickly.
For example, earlier this year, Bloomberg broke the story that Microsoft was preparing to name Satya Nadella CEO five days before the official announcement. The headline appeared on 320,000 Bloomberg terminals in 150 countries. In a matter of minutes, it was rolled out across the firm's television (340 million people globally) and digital properties (24 million unique visitors). Even a decade ago, rolling a story like that across countries and across media would have been difficult, if not impossible.
Parameshwaran ("Parry") Ravindranathan, managing director, Bloomberg Media, Asia Pacific, explains how it works. "When TV was envisaged 20 years ago, it was envisaged as an extension of the Bloomberg newsroom. There is one newsroom with 2,400 journalists that feeds the terminal, TV, magazines and other media. Any news breaks first go onto the terminal business [which generates a bulk of the revenues and profits that subsidise the media business] and then to TV, radio, online and print. The headlines break first. This is followed by more analysis, details and so on," he says.
It sounds common-sensical that all teams and bureaus should work together across formats. But that is not how the news business developed globally. In the editorial department of, say, a newspaper, there are silos of reporters, editors, designers and layout artists, many of who may not talk to each other for weeks together. If that newspaper is housed in a largish media company, you can bet that each of its brands - in TV, radio or online - operate in similar silos. Ask a senior manager in any large news media firm in India how they work across departments, and they will tell you that it is a nightmare.
Earlier this year, I visited the BBC's new billion-dollar hub in the heart of London. In a series of interviews with various people, the thing that came across consistently was that the physical proximity that integrated newsrooms force had made a huge difference to the way news is gathered and analysed. For example, during any major news break, say, the Syrian crisis, the BBC found that forming cross-media teams working on the same floor helped produce a lot more solid information and analysis. All the Arab and China experts (among others) in its radio service, who were hidden behind walls, had suddenly been discovered. Now add social media, which operates in the same space and you have a corporation that is frequently picking up bits and pieces of facts, news or pictures from social media and using it, after checks, to embellish a story or break one.
For most Indian news organisations, however, newsroom integration is synonymous with cost cutting. There are several reasons for this, the biggest being fragmentation and the inflationary pressure it puts on costs. India has 135 news channels (the largest anywhere in the world), more than 86,000 newspapers and so on. Ad revenues, which bring in more than 80 per cent of the cost of generating news, have been stagnant at Rs 1,800 crore for news television. Although newspapers have boomed, their expansion has burned huge amounts of capital awaiting returns. And the digital media foxes many of them.
This creates a gaping philosophical divide over the value that integrated newsrooms bring. At Network18, editors are not convinced that it is integration the way a Bloomberg or CNN has done, that is driving the hundreds of job cuts the company has seen recently. At MCCS, the company that owns ABP News among other channels, there is common sharing of resources but, philosophically, the firm believes that each channel is separate and should have an editorial point of view.
Maybe things will evolve as they have in the US or Europe. Says Ravindranathan, "A lot of people think of integration as cost-cutting. But integrated newsrooms make things quicker, more flexible. With a smaller team and budgets you could have a large amount of news content coming in. This is the future. For those who embrace it, not as a cost cutting exercise, but in the correct way, there can be no pitfalls."
Are Indian news organisations listening?