What killed News Debates.....

The days of 'saas-bahu' shows are long gone. Prime time television is dominated by a new breed of shows, at least to the best of my knowledge. This new breed is popularly known as talk show debates and I would like to dedicate this post to them.

I may not be writing such posts often, but a lot of such stuff keeps brewing in my mind of late. 

I started watching these shows two years ago; just as an attempt to know all the days affairs in a short time and remain updated about whatever is going on in the world. Seemed okay then, but now the same shows are taking a nasty turn and are offering its viewers anything but useful content.

Let us understand what all is going wrong in these shows....

The political parties that are sending their spokespersons to these shows no longer realize the importance of these shows as a medium to put forward agenda to the masses. All these so called spokespersons do is duck the questions; the shows slowly turn from being useful debates to hour long sessions of avoiding questions, finger pointing, talking off the topic, etc. Now I for once would pity these spokespersons, as they do sometimes have to defend the indefensible. But sometimes by the arguments of these people just gives the impression that they actually work for the opposite side, and are making silly arguments just to give the other side the advantage.

However, we cannot blame everything on the political parties... the competition among the channels is equally responsible for the downgrading of the shows. Sometimes, these shows focus not on the important topics, but the topics that might just work to boost TRPs. This again, will lead to repetitive debates, with nothing new coming out, combined with finger pointing or slug throwing depending on the topic. We might love the topics, but the content being discussed must be sensible.

Along with all these blunders, the biggest disadvantage news debates face is the format itself. Now, this is a format where the participants are expected to give straight responses and pick a single side. It is either black or white; one can never choose anything in between. That is when i start thinking that the days when print media was at a boom were much better; but i need to hold that thought right there, or i will get off topic...

There might be many other things that have actually killed news debates for me, and i would like to know more from others. 

I would also like to make it clear that I have taken care of not mentioning anyone or any channel personally, and there is no intention to offend anyone. These are just my views as a viewer. I also understand and respect the efforts of the channels, the party spokespersons and the anchors put in a lot of efforts to bring forward these shows. But, it is always easy to point out to the mistakes of others. Do point out to the mistakes I made in this post, if any, and do share your point of view in the comments below. Thanks!