A Textual Analysis of the Television Talk Show We The People

Abstract

Talk show programming has become a predominant genre of programming in news channels across India. While some scholars have lauded talk shows by equating them with deepening democracy, others dismiss them as mere carriers of neoliberal ideas that further widens the existing social divides. In order to further our understanding of the nuances of the ‘talk’ genre in television news, an attempt is made in this paper to do a textual analysis of a few episodes of the popular talk show ‘We The People’ aired on the English news channel NDTV 24x7. The data generated, is analysed along broad themes, like the type of issues debated, the presentation of the episodes, the nature of the debate/discussion, the representation of diverse voices in panel, the promotion of viewpoints and henceforth. This analysis is used in building up an argument of how talk programming in NDTV 24x7is framing the media discourse in India