TV news can learn from music industry to tackle challenges: Vikram Chandra, Editorji

Noting that finding the quality content that you need in a sea of information is like standing under a waterfall and trying to drink it, Vikram Chandra, senior TV newsman and Founder, Editorji Technologies, spoke about why he moved on from TV to digital video, and emerging technology solutions to problems of media viewership and addressability.

Chandra was speaking at a fireside chat at the exchange4media NewsNext 2023 Conference with Shantanu David, Principal Correspondent, exchange4media Group, about ‘Will news influencers become more important than media companies.’

“There are serious problems with television news. So Editorji is not necessarily an effort to set up an alternative. It's a technological solution that may point to a path for the future. It's a work in progress. It was not going to be done by one company or one organization. But we are facing an inflexion point right now in technology. With what's happening with AI, and with OTT and streaming,” he said.

“TV is a broken business model. We all know that; we have no TRPs, and we know that there's no money in doing 'quality' content. So you've got to put all of those boxes. We know that you're paying carriage fees. We know that no subscription money is coming, and therefore you have to turn to TRPs, and the only way to get TRPs is to yell and scream and do sensational content and there's no money to invest in good content,” he continued.

He said that instead of going over what was wrong with TV news, let us turn our attention to where digital video news is going wrong “The problem here is a flood of data, a flood of videos. It's coming to you on WhatsApp. It's coming to you on Facebook. It's coming to you on YouTube. You go to YouTube and say ‘I'm going to see the news’. How are you going to see the news? It's a flood that's coming to you. And that's the reason why digital news has not taken off. It's a problem of being able to provide adequate and proper curation. So you as a user or any user can get to rated video in a form that is acceptable to them.”

This was a realization that struck him about six, or seven years ago and was one of the factors that led Chandra to leave NDTV live television and try to find the solution.  "That's why I like coming to forums like this talking to you who are sitting out here so we can try and collectively find a solution to this.”

“We've got to find a solution in a manner that is inspired to some extent by the music industry. And I'll tell you why I'm saying this because music 10 years ago was facing a crisis very similar to what video news is facing today. And the parallels are almost exact. Television news is like radio and I’ve said this before. On the radio, you’ve got to listen to whatever is being streamed to you. There's no personalization. There's no customization. As a stream comes to you, you can watch it and if you don't like it, you change the channel,” he said.

On the other hand, according to Chandra, digital video news today is like cassettes and CDs. You can find the story that you want but you have to go searching for it and the user experience is not correct. “And by the way, if you're saying algorithms are going to do that even that's not perfect because the algorithms are being guided by your click behaviour but this is a broken process for a variety of reasons.

“Music found an answer in Spotify, Apple Music and many other formats and what fundamentally those formats are doing is: Number one, it creates algorithms through and creates the playlist that you will like, I'm customizing the same thing for you. Number two, it has a true expert curation; expert curation means these are the best 20 songs in the last week, top Songs of the 1970s, whatever you like to listen to. Number three. It allows people to build their playlists, and share them with others.

That’s what Editorji is trying to do and what Chandra and his team have been trying to do for the last four, or five years. “That essentially is what it is about it is about: how do you curate the flood of information in the stories and make them into a digestible package? If you were to open the app, you would see there is a there is an AI news feed that is personalized and customized. Then there is expert curation that shows the top 10 stories in xyz field and the third is perhaps the most exciting, as this is where news influencers come into it. We bought out a technology maker that allows users to create their video news channel.”