MEDIA MATTERS
More of the same?
SEVANTI NINAN
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A profusion of channels does not necessarily mean different or innovative content.
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Photo: S. Subramanium
Branching off: Karan Johar will be producing an entertaiment channel for NDTV.
MEDIA is booming in India. When there is push in an establishment and someone who is able and ambitious walks out, an entrepreneur and an enterprise are born. Sameer Nair and Peter Mukherjea who ran the Star ship have walked out today to make the shift from owner to entrepreneur, yesterday it was Rajdeep Sardesai and Arnab Goswami, each finding people to back them. And not so long ago NDTV was just a software company which had wrung a smart deal from a Murdoch news channel. Today it is a network of channels. Ditto for Rajat Sharma who has gone from software company owner to channel owner. As Indian talent comes of age and as investors keep coming in looking for people to bet on, the canvas will keep expanding. Or existing owners will divest stake and get the funds to expand existing empires. Shobana Bharatiya yesterday, Eeenadu owner Ramoji Rao today, with an overseas private equity investor reportedly putting over 1,200 crores into his Ushodaya Enterprises.
What's the difference?
But will it be essentially more of the same? The same kind of people from the same kind of media stables producing the same model of media businesses? No prizes for guessing the answer. Already there is speculation over whether Nair will take with him some of Star Plus's best selling programme properties, though it is not clear how he can do that. Sameer Nair and Karan Johar will be collaborating to produce an entertainment channel for NDTV in which all partners will hold stakes. The TV fiction genre is getting fossilised in its contrived, overpainted groove. Fresh ideas lose their way once ratings pressures begin as we've seen with serials like "Jassi". Or they get yanked off the air if they do not catch on fast enough. Will the new venture tell stories of other kinds of Indians? A Nagesh Kuknoor in Karan Johar's place would have held out some promise, but Mr. Successful Formula moviemaker, collaborating with Mr. Successful Formula TV honcho suggests that we will get more expensive blockbusters. I will be delighted to be proved wrong.
Difficult to achieve
As countries which have far more established media industries have discovered before us, marketplace forces do not ensure greater program diversity. A greater diversity of outlets does not ensure a diversity of viewpoints, voices, and approaches to entertainment or news, even though the shift from a supply market to a demand market is making consumers far more important than in the past, with channels second-guessing their desires. An unsatisfactory media measurement system does not allow variations in consumer preferences to come through. So more start-ups in the news sector, for instance, simply means more people shrieking or haranguing about the same things.
Boom time
As for radio, FM channels are flowering in all parts of the country, we need studies of their content to see if any fresh approaches to radio content are emerging.
There are two broad aspects to diversity. One is the question of formats and concepts, the other of whom TV programmes, particularly entertainment, are about. That is what was different about "Jassi", and about the protagonist Uma in "Thoda sa Zameen, Thoda sa Asmaan". They came from more realistic lower middle class milieus than the settings usually favoured by the serials on Star, Sony and Zee. They also did something other than reign over households caked in make up, and negotiate family politics. But then their story had to include the more saleable settings, to compensate for the realism. And these ended up overwhelming the elements that were different.
Ensuring diversity
In Europe even more than in the U.S. there is periodic monitoring and hand wringing over media and diversity. The State in many European countries appoints diversity officers. That is to ensure that minorities, and people of varying ethnicities find place in media content. The European equivalent of trying to ensure representation for Dalits and Muslims. But that is likely to happen successfully only when advertisers see them as target groups or when they own and create media themselves.
On formats and concepts, hopefully a more mature media market will gradually have the will and capacity to experiment. Diversity of programming is hard to come by in any advertising-driven revenue model, but it is market-driven TV cultures that have produced channels like Discovery, Animal Planet and Discovery Travel and Living. Al Jazeera English has come up with a documentary channel. With or without Johar, Nair and Co., the ball is in NDTV's court to demonstrate that it can innovate and still succeed.
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