Abhigyan Prakash, Executive Editor, NDTV India
This is my belief as a journalist, I cannot follow the tabloid route, or do what other people are doing. I solemnly believe that if people get a sensible debate, you will get viewers – there is that interest in society and the developments that impact it. My concept for the programmes was very clear – follow the news and try to raise questions around it. It is the oldest trick in the trade but if you do it with sincerity and conviction, it still works.
In the fast changing Hindi news world, what is the relevance of debates and discussions? This has been discussed extensively on various forums but the recent threat Javed Akhtar received following his comments on NDTV India’s Newspoint reiterates that debate forums can attract viewership on a Hindi news channel. In a conversation with exchange4media, NDTV India’s Abhigyan Prakash explains what is the thought process behind a show like ‘Newspoint’ or ‘Muqabla’ that are still opinion based shows following the debate and discussion model.
Abhigyan Prakash began his career as a trainee at The Times of India, Lucknow, and from there moved on to Pioneer for a short stint. His next destination was Delhi in an advertising agency. Prakash worked in HTA (now JWT) as Copy Writer but soon realised that news was his true calling. He was a part of the inception team at Zee and even worked for the magazine India This Week for a brief time. He was a part of the original NDTV team that delivered English news on STAR News. It was only in 2003, when Prakash made a complete shift to Hindi news. Now he has spent 14 years with NDTV and is at present the Executive Editor, NDTV India. Two of NDTV India’s most popular shows — ‘Newspoint’ and ‘Muqabla’ are credited to Prakash. Q. Do you take the competitive environment, both within the channel and outside of it, in account?
The concept of pushing big debate shows is not there in the vernacular news world. I see a lot of similar programmes on other channels but the big debate show format is not very popular. You have to gauge the space of your content and decide accordingly. You have to see what your show line-up is — for instance a preceding news bulletin can build the big story and then we turn it into a debate, the treatment will thus be different.
Q. A one hour daily show, that too focussing on debates, can be quite a task. What is the broad guiding principle that you follow for ‘Newspoint’?
In this fast changing, Hindi news world, where much of news has taken the tabloid route, leads people to think that debates where you call people, and question them on development or everyday issues, doesn’t really work, at least not in the Hindi domain, because the Hindi viewer is not considered serious. People thought that there was no space for this kind of programme. But we decided to do this, on a daily basis, purely for two reasons. First, on a more personal front, this is my belief as a journalist, I cannot follow the tabloid route, or do what other people are doing. Second, I solemnly believe that if people get a sensible debate, you will get viewers – there is that interest in society and the developments that impact it. My concept for this programme was very clear – follow the news and try to raise questions around it. It is the oldest trick in the trade but if you do it with sincerity and conviction, it still works.
Q. And what about days when nothing big has happened?
You try and also lift stories. True, it is not every day that big news happen, so you look at stories that have a social spin. So we do a lot of cricket as well. Cricket as a topic has resulted in many different subjects today. Opinion debate on movies is a great area of interest – people love movies in this country and a lot of people have opinions on films. There is a new area emerging in finance especially from the area of personal finance. So you still manage to find some talking point.
Q. How do you seek the daily talking point? Any checks there?
The talking point is the biggest story of the day. But on any given day, there would be events and stories and you need to differentiate between the two. You need to see what can lead to a debate. Don’t forget that at the end of the day, this is an opinion show and it helps people in building their opinion on a subject. In fact, there are many times when we put questions on the show and people text their views and it is amazing how, on many instances, those opinions change by the end of the show.
The only check, as you put it, is to make sure that the opinions on both the sides are heard and represented. Even if we discuss the Javed Akhtar episode on the fatwa pertaining to Muslim women, the key of the issue is the composition of the panel. You call people who have different opinions on the subject, a Qazi of Lucknow, a liberal Muslim, a professor of Islamic Studies and so on. You have to make sure that ‘X-person’, who is coming on the show, has a certain opinion. You have to allow the debate to happen in the healthiest fashion without taking sides. I make sure that each person’s opinion is heard and represented and ultimately it is the viewer who decides what is right or wrong. Sometimes, you would just be surprised on the kind of opinions that many may come up on subject like honour killing or Mayawati’s opulent style of politics and how the least suspected will think that honour killing is fine or that Mayawati’s ways are better, since they are at least upfront.
Q. And then there is the weekend show in ‘Muqabla’...
‘Muqabla’ is completely different from the ‘Newspoint’ kind of debate format. I have a great production team for both the shows. ‘Muqabla’ is your week’s big story and as the name suggests, it is more animated. The key difference is that over the week one gets a grasp of the topic that that has continued to be a story in people’s mind. It is almost like a Saturday or Sunday edition of a newspaper, you spin the story to find a new angle to it. The element of presentation becomes most important.
Q. How do you refresh these shows?
Presentation, by way of graphics, visuals and camera are the main ways to refresh. When one get enough experience with TV, you know that there are many small things that you constantly need to do to keep reiterating. From the content point of view, one knows that this is an opinion based show and hence one cannot move away from it too much. But you can change the presentation like incorporating a lighter tone in one segment or get in a co-anchor. Also, as you analyse your programme, you get an indicator of whether you are choosing the right topics that are generating enough user interest or not. Over a period of time, you can easily identify these topics, and you start making appropriate changes.
Q. The ‘sensational’ seems to work for a few when it comes to generating ratings?
Sensational won’t work for us. Simply because our channel has a different belief system and our brand is not positioned to function on the ‘sensational’ mode of news. Rating is important and it is a concern when content efforts don’t convert to ratings but one has to figure out ones own clever alternatives. We are constantly pushing ourselves to figure out ways to respond to the sensational content without compromising on our own values.
