Times Now was launched today, another news channel now joins the parade of news channels that fill our tv sets. CNN IBN had started almost a month back, both news channels have one well know presenter from the NDTV network to market their channel.
This media frenzy worries me as now its clearly become a battle ground for who will bring the news first. This is good and bad at the same time. If you are wondering whats wrong with that… well that will soon mean that people will be encouraged to do crazy stuff coz they will make the 4 o clock news.
Soon we will have live telecasts of police chases like American tv when the channels find that telecasting that gets more ratings. Not to mention publicity of criminal and terrorist activites, which will encourage such activities just coz they will get the possibility of being on air to get a message out.
On the bright side events like trapping corrupt officials taking bribes ect will be more often (again for ratings), issues will be dealt with clearly and we get to view many opinions rather than the one channel one earlier.
Tv is a very sensitive communication medium and we will have situations where the wrong info was given out earlier and that can cause a lot more damage than a right one delayed. I recently read an article about a mine cave-in and all the miners were buried alive. The tv news channel had reported that the miners were alive and were rescued and later realized their folly but its hard to imagine what would go thru the mind of the families of those miners.
Maybe I am over reacting but I would personally settle for a handful of news channels giving out different opinions rather than a dozen fist fighting to get the viewers attention. The best would be to go back to those days I would wait to listen to News daily at 9 pm with my family… those days are long gone.