MORE NEWS IS GOOD NEWS
Untold stories from 25 years of television news - NDTV @ 25
Ayesha Kagal (Ed)
Harper Collins
372 pages; Rs 799
In 1945, a 20-year-old undergraduate at New College, Oxford, David Butler, wrote a history of the British elections. It was an appendix for a book by Ronald McCallum, a Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and co-author of the first in the series along with Alison Readman, a research assistant.
That book prompted a second when the next election came around in 1950. Since it looked like becoming a regular affair, the authors wondered what word could best describe the "study of elections". A Greek scholar suggested "psephology". When ancient Greeks voted in the first democracies they dropped pebbles or psephos in an urn. The Nuffield Election Studies has been published with every election in the UK since 1945. Mr Butler's use of the word "psephology" and his emphasis on the idea of the "swing" vote made him famous.
It was also the reason two Indian economists, Prannoy Roy and Ashok Lahiri, analysing election results in India, invited him to the country in 1983. Mr Butler was taken to Hyderabad to see the first experimental use of electronic voting machines. When they flew back to Delhi, the popular thinking was that the Congress would come back to power in (then united) Andhra Pradesh. But when the first results showed the Congress losing in three safe seats, Mr Butler predicted it would lose the state. Messrs Roy and Lahiri did not believe him. But Mr Butler was right, it was the N T Rama Rao swing. After NDTV began in 1988, Mr Butler has been on board for every election.
This anecdote is from an illuminating interview with Mr Butler by Ishwari Bajpai in 2013. It forms part of the wonderful read that is More News is Good News. The book, which began to be put together to celebrate NDTV's 25th year in 2013, is an anthology of essays, interviews, and pieces by many people who have been instrumental in building India's first private news organisation. If, like me, you have grown up in the Doordarshan years, it is a fun read. In the process you revisit India, the news industry, the television news industry and get a ringside view of some of the fun, trauma and tension that went into building NDTV. The parts where it dealt with technological problems by writing its own software or the way it handled the stifling rules for news in the eighties gives you huge perspective on the business.
Radhika Roy was with India Today and her husband Prannoy Roy was an economist. When Ms Roy thought of getting into television news, Mr Roy followed and The World this Week was born. It started airing on Doordarshan in November 1988. The state-owned broadcaster which had a monopoly till the early nineties had a list of dos and don'ts - no domestic news, no use of the word "live" and so on. In 1998 NDTV became the editorial arm of Star News, part of (then) News Corporation's Star India. In 2003 when NewsCorp wanted editorial control, NDTV broke up to set up its own broadcast operation.
Much of this is known. But there are loads of insights and anecdotes that the anthology format makes easier to read. The essay by Mr Roy is a must-read especially because he is so difficult to interview. He talks about India's electoral process and the institutions it has in place with affection and pride. It is a happy, positive piece from a man you would assume is traumatised by the fact that his firm has rarely made money.
He tackles head-on the present conundrum of news television. The only way to make money in news journalism today, it would seem, is by "tabloidising". And because NDTV Hindi remains the only Hindi news channel that has not "tabloidised", it continues to make a loss, he says.
His analysis of what's wrong is bang on. And so are the solutions, some of which this paper has been advocating - that self-regulatory bodies such as the Press Council of India need teeth and there should be penalties for defamation and libel.
The other nice piece is the one from Tavleen Singh who went to Pakistan to file a report for one of the first episodes of The World this Week. There is one hilarious piece from Aneesha Baig on how Night Out , an entertainment show, was given the go ahead by the "serious NDTV" in 2001. There are pieces by Rajdeep Sardesai, Vishnu Som, Ravish Kumar, Maya Sharma and many others who have been with NDTV for long. Surprisingly there is also a foreword from the reclusive Ms Roy, reputed to be the backbone of the company.
Despite some repetition and loose editing, the book largely delivers what it promises - untold stories from 25 years of television news.
