TV news is different because it has ‘TV’ in it. Most often we tend to forget this while trying to find out what is good, bad and ugly in TV news and why so? This book delves deep to track the hip-hop journey of TV news in India mired in controversies, it’s content crisis, shouting anchors and vanishing reporters, the great debate tamasha and so on. A sincere effort and worth read, though few questions remain unanswered and most prominent among them is why TV news is ‘TV news!’

—Q.W. Naqvi Former News Director, TV Today Network

This book is the first attempt to examine and analyse trends of TV news contents based on first hand database, showcasing TV news in India. As it has highlighted the major issues of TV news, the book has significant implications for global TV news industry, particularly for a neighbouring country like China where TV news is undergoing fundamental changes in the digital era.

—Guo Ke Professor and Dean, School of Journalism & Communication and Director, Center for Global Public Opinion of China, Shanghai International Studies University

The scale of this CMS Media Lab enterprise is stupendous: A systematic 10-year longitudinal study of the content and slant of hundreds of TV news channels in the world’s most populous polity! Whether a lay reader, a concerned citizen, a media official, an entertainment executive, a policy-maker, or a nation builder, the insights contained herein capture the complexity of collecting, sifting, and presenting of valuable news and information on one hand, and its low-balling and trivialisation on the other!

—Arvind Singhal  Marston Endowed Professor of Communication, Univ. of Texas at El Paso author: “India’s Communication Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts”

The book is the need of the hour for an industry which is still passing through an evolutionary stage, from that of an idiot box to an intelligent and intellectual medium. In the absence of scientific data, the discourse on Indian television is based on misconceptions, stereotypes and half truth. With the fast emerging social media and an enlightened citizenry increasingly raising questions on the credibility of news content, it is pertinent to have credible empirical data and reliable research for a substantive overview. My heartiest compliments to CMS for this path breaking initiative.

—K.G. Suresh Senior Consulting Editor, Doordarshan News