Changing Paradigms of TV News Presentation and Viewership in India

The 1995 landmark judgment of Supreme Courtdeclaring air waves as public property brought private players into the business of broadcasting. Globalization and Economic liberalization brought in foreign players into the Indian television industry, leading to proliferation in the number of English, Hindi and other vernacular channels. Cut throat competition gave way to the ‘nation wants to know’ style of high pitch polarized debates, heated arguments and sensational stories, replacing the yester year style of straight forward television news presentation. Terms like ‘Breaking News’, Flash’, or ‘Exclusive’ have lost their sanctity today. In the present era of hash tag revolution, Prosumers (a discursive word coined to denote the online users who are both producers and consumers of news) are gradually replacing mere consumers. News reporting and consumption have become instantaneous as never before due to smart phone and 4G revolution. Given such competition from cyber media, TV news presentation style has become more pressing, dramatic, research based, experimental, dynamic and many a times opinionated as well. The paper strives to analyze the changes in News presentation style in Indian TV news channels and studies the television viewing patterns of the people in Jaipur city.