Wednesday, January 17, 2007

STAR TV 1, Bloggers 0

STAR TV is in turmoil, with Michelle Guthrie having quit, and Steve Askew, Peter Mukerjea and Sameer Nair rumoured to have quit.
With the only official comment confirming Guthrie’s exit and Paul Aiello’s replacing her as CEO of STAR TV, but not mentioning the others mentioned above, the situation was tailormade for a victory for the blogosphere over MSM.
And I’ve been tracking the blogosphere from the moment noises on Guthrie’s exit got louder, and the subsequent discovery amazes me.
The number of blogs writing on the mess at STAR?
ONE. This one.
What makes STAR so special? Ever since Pradyuman Maheshwari launched Mediaah! (subsequently shut down), Indian bloggers have been tracking and writing about all kinds of developments in Indian media houses, whether at Times of India or NDTV or CNN IBN. Rumours. Gossip. Vitriol. Comment. Spite. Fact. Fiction. If you want dope on Rajdeep Sardesai or Barkha Dutt or Arnab Goswami, it’s all there in the blogworld.
But STAR or Peter Mukerjea or Sameer Nair? Zip.
Weird.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's because nobody could care less about the poor management styles of Steve Askew, Michelle Guthrie, et al.

Anant Rangaswami said...

That's sad. If people did care, the current situation may not have come to pass.
Blogs, in some small way, act as checks and balances.
And blogs have a way of finally arriving at a fair opinion, even if original posts are distorted or biased.
This blog, for instance, is comments enabled without moderation. If there are more enough responses (this blog is not impactful enough yet for conversations), they could form constructive, rather than destructive, criticism for those who err -- consciously or unconsciously.