Hindi has been a weak spot at NDTV, the skipper Pronnoy himself knows very little of it and his turks including Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt and Abhhigyan Prakash just manage to speak tuti-phuti Hindi only when in dire need. Yet NDTV was in a dilemma to start a lateral Hindi channel when its deal with Star was over. Many news anchors made hay as they hopped from strong Hindi channels like Aaj Tak and now as you look at the state of NDTV India you can gauge that it is precisely not NDTV Bharat. The channel is for the anglicized urban India with absolutely no sarokar with ground situations. With exposure to programme like Jina Issi Ka Naam hai NDTV has these cinema-based shows where the news anchors are actually behaving like actors (remember the item where the pitch dark presenter is playing a double role, disgusting). And there has been little effort to change the style of anchors as well, Punya Prasun still speaks khadi boli the Aaj Tak way, Pankaj Pachori is still blatantly confused, Abhigyan still has that poor Hindi diction.
And it seems the team of Pronnoy, who had shown Indians how a news presenter should be, needs a lesson or two on news presentation. Take the evening newscasts for example. You may start wondering if something is wrong with Dibang's eyesight, or the studio lights are too piercing or is it the teleprompter that's gone wary. A seasoned professional like him who used to flawlessly deliver news at Aaj Tak seems utterly confused, stammering umpteen times, unable to read from the teleprompter and not having any clue what is ahead when he is stuck somewhere. The headlines are mostly are heftily assembled and utterly jumbled up fragments of Hindi. Even the local Hindi tabloids know how to frame a better crispy sentence. The only solace is, thank god, the news reports.
In the race of news channels while Sahara Samay, despite of having an obvious bias, is picking up well perhaps due to the regional approach and people who know the language. With its nodal centres on the pipeline this would be a force to reckon with.
Cumm-on NDTV, we could appreciate that commercial compulsions can lead you to jump on an unknown terrain. But at least with your reputation I expected a better preparation.
