Television News headlines with stories from the web

CNN-IBN 11^th Nov, Saturday: Buddhadeb Bhattacharya (WB CM) wants to make friends on the Internet. Not him actually, its probably a prankster. Buddha’s Id’s found on a popular Networking site (Orkut) and his reading his profile has raised a few eyebrows. Though a most of facts are stated correctly, it also says that he’s a social drinker and of interest in dating.

NDTV 24x7 12^th Nov, Sunday: Indian An Indian traffic video makes waves in a popular video site (YouTube). It has seen over 1.5 Lakh hits in the last few weeks. This video (Also a PressMart Blog video) gives the viewer a panoramic view of a busy road intersection where you see vehicles of various sizes that move at varied speeds – some of them slow down, few zoom past or the others wait to take a turn. Apart from the vehicles and bullocks that one sees you also have men cross and walk by. Inspite of encountering such diverse moving objects, people more often than not manage to get past without a trouble.

Now here’s the question that we ask - Has the broadcast media realized the importance of the internet by using content from the web in order to keep its audience captivated? Here are the some views and counter-views. You can also take part in our exclusive poll & also understand what the junta feels.

Views
Yes, they have realized the importance and considering that the Internet epitomizes the fast-paced world, successful media houses are making efforts to keep themselves regularly abreast with the latest developments on the web. This is evident from not just the news stories but also the full-fledged websites that they maintain. CNN-IBN is assisted by the fact that they a active website which also includes the ‘news on videos’ feature. NDTV on the other has tied-up with MSN and their website is managed by the by NDTV media team. The bottom line here is that with such varied repertoire of stories from the Internet, it’s sure to keep the TV audience pepped.

Counter-views
However, though the Internet runs into millions of pages and accessibility is simple, at the moment the number of people who have access to the Television is much is bigger that audience that regularly accesses the Internet. Coming to the above news stories, both the Orkut story as well as the YouTube video have been there in the web for long. Therefore if not targeted at the less computer savvy audience, the regular web browsers probably would find such news stories obsolete. So these stories can only be used discretely and with the motive of break the flow of the other heavy news.

PressMart Poll results: Has the broadcast media realized the importance of the internet by using content from the web in order to keep its audience captivated? Yes-59%, No-18%, Can't Say-23%