Campaign for Calm!!!

The NDTV campaign for Calm, launched after the recent Malegaon blast is one of the best things to come from a news channel since the advent of the Live News era on Indian television. What NDTV did was very simple and should be in any disaster management plans. They went to all the top religious leaders from all different locations and religions and got a statement from them urging people to remain calm and stay away from creating any communal tension. Now many of these religious leaders may have felt otherwise but on television they could not have possible said anything else. So by getting them speaking for peace on live television I think they may have prevented a lot of communal tension if not violence. Not only that but they also got many of these religious heads on the same platform to light candles for peace. Ya it did seem a little filmy but you bet it worked. Over the weekend they also covered the good, bad and ugle straight from Malegaon.

Compare this to news channels like Aaj Tak and Star News; Aaj Tak on Saturday (the day after the blast) was covering a story abt a car being driven without a driver. They got Dilip Chabharia and other supposedly important people to debate and discuss as to how this is possible. They rarely broadcasted the calm that had set over Malegaon instead choosing to relay scenes of devastation over and over again. Malegaon has been the scene of a lot of communal rioting over past few decades (last one as early as 2001). The fact that after such a big incident happened on such an important day (for Muslims) and in spite of this there was hardly any rioting (save a few stones thrown immediately after the blast) is the single biggest news story this year. Instead that honor will go to the 'Rescuing Prince' disaster.

NDTV has concentrated on important personal issues, like Jessica lal, Katara and Matto murder cases, with larger social ramifications. Its coverage of the RTI act story has been very very commendable. The other petty news channels have been obsessed with prince, Don Parties and Amar singh. What NDTV really lacks is capability to deliver quality international news. That credit goes to IBN (CNN partnered) which due to its backing by CNN is the Indian News channel to watch for international events. But unlike IBN, which mostly targets the urban elite, NDTV (both Hindi and English) still count the Indian masses as there main target audience and thus have to compete with other news channel to give the Indian audience the news as they like to hear it, with little drama and lot of spice. But they have still made a conscious effort to not degrade the quality of news. Kudos to Pranay Roy and team!!! I read somewhere that a similar thing happened in the US media market many years back. There were tons of news channel all giving spiced up news, in many cases creating stories. As the market and audience matured gradually 2-3 channels came up on top while others either closed shop or concentrated on delivering local/regional news. The Indian news televising will eventually go the same path and you may have guessed whom I have bet big on.