| India is riding a news boom. This boom cuts across media, languages and geographies. Have Indians suddenly realised the value of being better informed? Or has there been a dramatic rise in literacy? Is there a technological leap forward or is it just the beginning of the much-anticipated information revolution? |
| Perhaps it's a bit of all this. Indians are known to be garrulous. What is happening is now a rapidly growing economy together with technology is monetising a seemingly inane activity. Today, the Great Indian News Bazaar is valued at Rs 5,000 crore. |
| In the last one year several TV news channels have been launched and more are on their way. NDTV has three news channels and is said to be launching one more called Nation. |
| If its balance sheet is any indication it seems to be doing very well. The sauve and scholarly Roy couple "" Prannoy and Radhika "" must be a bit astonished at the kind of wealth news gathering has generated. Investment banker turned anchor turned entrepreneur Raghav Bahl is not far behind. The TV 18 group is ready to beam another channel in partnership with TV anchor Rajdeep Sardesai. |
| Media tycoon Aroon Purie has a couple of TV channels with a third on its way. Even the old lady of Boribunder has teamed with the dowager of Fleet Street to launch a news channel called TIMES NOW. |
| But this exponential growth means a shortage of trained professionals and a lot of imitation and little innovation. The immediacy of the medium often translates into sensationalism and in a country with archaic libel laws, news can sometimes be slanderous and, occasionally, outright false. Sound bytes and barks are becoming blase. |
| The same set of talking heads appear on all channels with such regularity that one actually yearns to hear/watch genuine wisdom on the telly. |
| One would have thought that with so much action on the idiot box, the world of cold print would be dead. On the contrary, we've seen an unreal resurgence of newspapers. Who could have thought that Mumbai city could support almost a dozen English dailies with a combined circulation of 1.5 million and ad spends of over Rs 1,000 crore? |
| Existing players like The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Deccan Chronicle are expanding even as DNA (Diligent Media) makes its debut. Here again, like in TV, a me-too tendency is creeping in. The same Page 3s, the hype and hoopla and even the same punditry on the edit pages. Inventiveness is being left only to the marketers. |
| One only hopes this boom is for real and not an encore of the dot com bubble of the late 1990s. |
| (The author is Chairman of Reliance Entertainment and the views expressed are his own) |
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