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Making news

News has gone in for a makeover, becoming informative and entertaining at the same time

Every Sunday night primetime, Telugu television buffs ditch the `Maha blockbuster movie' on the entertainment channels in favour of a spicy, engrossing crime show, hosted by the inimitable Telangana Shakuntala on a 24-hour Telugu news channel. Every weekend when Aarti Agarwal consumes pesticide, breaks her collarbone or slits her wrist, the remote buttons flick from the 9.30 to 11.30 pm daily serials to the news channels screening the dishy news.

Any surprise? Entertainment now comes in the form of news. Well, fact is stranger then fiction. And breaking news more engrossing than Ekta Kapoor's Kaahin Toh Hoga!

With news channels giving more live action and Dopamine-generating inside stories, couch potatoes and remote controls are invariably flipping across to them. Interestingly, it's not the far cry national news channels with just a dose of Andhra in the state scan news, but our own Telugu ones that are garnering the eyeballs, eardrums, thumb tips and whatever else it takes to make their TRP ratings soar.

If a peek into the private life of a disgruntled movie star and a sex scandal in Vizag's cybercafe comprises news, who wants movies and entertainment anyways?

Three 24-hour news channels (TV9, Teja News, ETV2) and a handful of others airing news on the hour, every hour, Telugu news is the `most-watched' show now. "What do you like? Rerun of a flop big budget movie or live thrilling action bang here on the news channels?" asks Ravi Prakash, CEO of TV9, a Telugu news channel.

The stereotype was that the men watched news, women the soaps and children the movies. Recent surveys reveal that news time has become family time. The reason for the proliferation of news channels.

Most of these channels function like a weekend magazine of a newspaper these days. It is packaged with a helping of politics, crime, movies, glamour, gossip, Page 3, eating out and whatnots.

The newsreaders now sport funky blazers, feather cuts, French beards, polo T-shirts, smart kurtas, sportswatches and talk to you in a mix of Telugu-English with colourful ceramic coffee mugs in hands. The headlines have become as catchy as movie titles, the opening music snazzier than mobile ringtones and the newscasters more glamorous than those Mumbai heroines. "Even five years ago, news meant a sari-clad middle-aged newsreader looking blank into the screen. Today, the backdrop is in multimedia, with lot of human dynamics (people and news desk in action in the background), live logos, moving images and more. It is so vibrant that it can make a Balaji Telefilms serial feel like a yawn," says Pragati, news anchor of Maa TV news.

It was TV9's Ravi Prakash who started the trend of new-age power dressing. "We put up youngsters in a no-nonsense outfit reading news in a slang that we are all familiar with as newscasters. That made the 20plus demographic hooked on to our channel," he says.

We're a news-hungry nation and by our sheer good luck, lots of crime, sex scandals and politics have only made it more exciting.

"A bomb blast on WTC can affect your visiting visa to the US. A decision on call centre outsourcing in HSBC's headquarters London can affect your daughter's career. News dictates your life and commands your lifestyle. Why else would you want to skip the news for a silly daily soap?" asks Ravi Prakash. Yes, why else?

MANJU LATHA KALANIDHI

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