Shazi Zaman, Editor, MCCS

Shazi Zaman joined Star News as Senior Executive Producer after moving on from his post of Executive Producer at Aaj Tak. He is currentl Editor at MCCS. As Editor, Zaman is responsible for editorial content of all the three channels of the MCCS network – Star News, Star Ananda and Star Majha.

A graduate in History from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, Zaman has received training in electronic media journalism at the Thomson Foundation, CNN, BBC World Service Training, and Film and Television Training Institute of India, Pune.

Zaman started his career as a correspondent with Doordarshan in 1988, and has over 20 years of invaluable journalistic experience. He had worked as a Producer with BBC World Service, London, from 1996 to 1999. He then moved on to Zee News as Editor, a position he had held till 2001.

With a flair for fiction, Zaman is also an established Hindi novelist. He is well known for his work – ‘Premgali Ati Sankri’ – a story that deals with the complexities of gender relations.

In conversation with exchange4media’s Shikha and Nitin Pandey, Zaman speaks at length about ‘Jan Hit’ versus ‘Jan Ruchi’ content, chasing TRPs, the formation of Broadcast Editors’ Association, journalistic talent and more…

Q. Star News has been doing well in the ratings game for some time now, though it has not stayed on at No. 2, or even the No. 1 spot that it had reached a couple of years back. How do you view this?

We take immense pride in our credible content. As an Editor, it is my duty and responsibility to offer credible content. In terms of content, in terms of presentation, we think we are far ahead of anybody else and that is a matter of pride. When you see others following you, it further strengthens your belief that you are offering something that people like to follow. We take great pride in our thought leadership.

As a channel, we have given more formats to the industry than anybody else – whether it is 24-ghante-24-reporter format, the rapid fire format or the ‘Saas Bahu aur Saazish’, which is a sub-genre in itself, or ‘Anchor Hunt’. Nobody has thought of that before we did it in India. Nobody has yet followed the ‘Anchor Hunt’ format, but they might in the future. The rapid fire content or ‘Saas Bahu aur Saazish’ – these are the fields where we are the trailblazers and people have followed us. We take pride in reading the latent needs of the audience. Before we launched ‘Saas Bahu aur Saazish’, nobody could ever think that such an audience exists. We did that and it became a great success. Six years running and it is still the No. 1 programme.

We take pride in doing programmes that tap into people’s desire to know, people’s insecurities. Take for example a programme like ‘Sansani’. I don’t call it a crime show, I call it a security show. We could see that the Hindi speaking audience has security on its mind, so the programme caters to that. The kind of political debates that we do, nobody else does. We have liberated the camera from the tripod, the camera moves around like the human eye. You would see the camera moving around in an animated manner as if the camera is the person himself. So, whether it is the presentation or whether it is the content, we have great faith in experimentation, and people love our experiments and others have followed that.

The very act of meeting so many people and tapping their talent was very fruitful. We got to meet so many people in different cities. Star News got to interact with so many enthusiasts and we could actually recruit quite a few of them. We had to recruit two of them, the winners, but when we saw that there is a wealth of talent, we ended up recruiting five. It was very productive.

See, I think if you chase TRPs, you never get it; if you chase credible content, you get the ratings and that is how it should be. Consciously, we never discuss ratings. Beyond a point one should not be chasing ratings on a micro basis, my experience shows that if you take care of the big picture and you chase good content, ratings would follow definitely. But if you consciously chase ratings like a statistician, very often they don’t come to you.

The person who heads the BBC World Service is presiding over no less than 40 languages at one time. I am not comparing myself with him, just that I have worked in that organisation so I know. If you know human beings, if you know politics, if you know journalism, then you can deal with any region in the world.

It definitely does. Primarily, the content has to be right and only then you can market it. Marketing would fail if the right content is not in place.

Regarding partnerships, I am not competent enough to answer that, but I would say that there is far greater consciousness now at this point of time of the social responsibility, there is far more maturity now than before. I won’t say that all that we need to do have been done, because even if you do, the situation is very dynamic. In the news industry, everyday is a dynamic situation, it is thrown at your face and you need to find an answer. No rule book, no code in the news industry is written in stone, because everyday there is a new situation for which you don’t have a precedent. So, you need to get together to discuss, debate, and evolve new codes, which is always work in progress.

It definitely helps. I remember that during the Mumbai floods, Star News had pioneered it. People were marooned, it was a strange situation. Since we are a channel based in Mumbai, we were victims of the flood, but at the same time we had the responsibility of covering the flood and a greater responsibility because our hub was in Mumbai. This was in 2005, it was difficult for our reporters to move out, but they moved out in whatever way they could – even in boats. That was the time when we sent out a signal from our channel to everybody, telling our audience ‘wherever you are, you are our eyes and ears, you are our reporters , you have a camera, a still camera, a movie camera, a mobile camera – whatever you have, please shoot it and send it to us’. That was the time we got a large amount of footage.

Going by the applications we get, a large number of people want to be a part of us. As I said, it has become a habit to curse news channels. May be something that is dear to us we find easy to curse. Anybody who is near and dear to us and ready at hand – and TV news is almost a member of your family – you feel free to curse. Otherwise it is a great career option for people and people want to be a part of Star News.

The intention is never to decrease the seriousness, but the intention definitely is to convey the flavour of the elections. You look at any of our election programmes – be it ‘Kaun Banega Mukhyamantri’ at 6 pm, or the debate at 9 pm, or you look at Shera (the mascot for the Delhi Commonwealth Games) in our newsrooms during CWG. The content of what Shera said or what Chulbul Pandey says is not non-serious, it is thought provoking. There is a bit of lampooning in that, there is a bit of satire in that. I am very comfortable with satire, it has a legitimate place in journalism. Now, if that satire occurs on the front page of a newspaper, like if Chulbul Pandey appears in print, you are comfortable with that just because it is an animated character.

That is an area of deep concern. There is a huge gap between what is being taught in the institutes and what is required in the newsrooms of various channels. I don’t think the media institutes know exactly what is required in the newsroom. A journalist who enters television today needs far more depth and breadth than ever before, he needs to know politics, business, soaps, cinema, everything, and he needs to be far more tech savvy than ever before. The depth and breadth of technical and content, both are missing. I have a feeling that the syllabi of these institutes are still archaic. The language that we speak, the content that we put on air – that is something that they have not yet taken into account.

I would not like to comment on what others are doing. But there has been a trend of cut and paste. In the long run that will harm us, because why would people watch you when you are second to a GEC? People would be very happy watching the GEC in that case. Beyond a point that affects you negatively. If you offer a perspective to that content, if you offer an opinion or context to that content, then people will watch you. Then you evoke respect, and respect is essential to our profession. Because when you put something on air, people implicitly believe you because they respect you. There is an implied belief that what you are saying is the truth and what you are saying is correct. If you lose that respect, you hit at the foundation of our business.

I don’t think so. The Broadcast Editors’ Association (BEA) is a voluntary body that people have voluntarily joined, and nobody has voluntarily walked out. Actually, the message of the Ayodhya episode is that the industry is mature enough to self regulate and there is no need of the government to regulate.

The issues mostly deal with sensibilities and sensitivities, anything that could cause harm to the image of the channel or cause harm to society. That we discuss, debate and decide upon.

Each channel has its own way of mixing the two. We have our own mix, on our channel you will find a substantial portion of ‘jan hit’ and some portion of ‘jan ruchi’ as well. Times have changed; I remember a time almost 10 years back when there was a huge debate in a particular newsroom about a cinema story in a bulletin, it was almost blasphemous that there should be a one. Now, you have bulletins based on cinema. This has happened because of two reasons – first, the news industry has taken into account diverse interests of the people and reached out to them. Secondly, the news universe itself has expanded and a lot more people are watching news channels.

So, you need to take into account the larger universe. If there is a substantial population that needs a particular kind of content – whether it is based on soaps, cinema, crime, business or politics – you can’t wish it away. You can’t subject people to a Victorian definition of news. If there are people who are watching soaps or serials, it is my duty to offer soap review. My discomfort arises when people cut and paste reality shows on news channels. I am very comfortable if as a journalist I am reviewing that content – that is an intellectual activity, it is journalistic, it is credible, it is acceptable because then you are adding value to the information needs of the people. Unfortunately, what has happened is people have found a shortcut of cutting and pasting, which is not a cerebral activity. So, my deep discomfort arises from that kind of non-cerebral activity. Otherwise I am very comfortable doing a soap review, a security programme like ‘Sansani’ or political debates. But doing it in a manner that is not done from an ivory tower. If you look at the frames that we use in television, we have become a channel of close-ups, we look at people in the eye, that is what television should be. And that is what Star News is all about.

It is very important to demystify political reporting or any kind of reporting, and to do that you should use all possible tools. After all, what is Chulbul Pandey? Chulbul Pandey is a cartoon character. Every newspaper has a cartoon character who speaks the common man’s language and that is what Chulbul Pandey all about, he is the common man of Bihar, raising the common man’s questions. So, if you are clear about your content, then you need to find the most effective ways of presentation – that could be Chulbul Pandey, that could be an animated character, that could be well be a guest or an anchor as well. These are just different ways of conveying a message.

Actually, about a year or two ago, we realised that there was a crisis in the news industry and we needed to introduce some kind of self regulation. There is a body called News Broadcasting Standard Authority (NBSA), headed by Justice JS Verma. That is a body founded by all news channels and that is a body under whose jurisdiction we have submitted ourselves. Anybody who has a complaint against us can go to that body. They have to first write to us and if they think that we don’t offer the required redressal, they can go to that body and action can be taken against us. But we thought there is also a need for another body which is something on the lines of the Editors ‘Guild for the print media.

Television needed an editors’ body for self reformation, because there wasn’t any forum to discuss, debate, analyse, dissect, and reform, so we created that forum in the shape of Broadcast Editors’ Association about a year back. A lot of what we do under that body happens behind the scenes and you won’t get to know about it. We interact almost on a daily basis, and suppose there is a flare-up happening somewhere, then we take a decision not to show the visuals, which could further inflame passions. Those are the kind of interactions that happen on a daily basis via mails and we take decisions everyday. So, that is a major step in self reformation. If you look at the Ayodhya coverage, a lot of stakeholders were very apprehensive on what would happen. If you look closely, the news industry on the whole behaved in a very sane and responsible manner. That is because of this body.

These also happen, but more emergent issues like I had mentioned, Ayodhya for instance. Ayodhya took up a lot of time, we had numerous meetings, somebody counted that more than 100 mails were exchanged between editors on Ayodhya itself. There were a lot of grey areas. What kind of discussions should happen, what should be the format of the discussions, how long should you have the discussions? Everything came up for a review and in the end what turned out was very constructive.