This was the preserve of The Times of India, now all newspapers have followed suit. Neo launches a new channel, and their brand ambassadors include Gopichand and Sania Mirza. All leading newspapers carry a photograph taken at the launch (except for HT, all carry Sania’s photo), but none of the captions name the channel that is launched.
I’ve always marveled at instances such as this; today, one asks: is the news newsworthy or not?
If it is newsworthy, the content is obviously the fact that a new channel has been launched. That information alone is of absolutely no utlitity to man or beast. What makes it useful is when the reader is given the following information:
What is the name of the channel?
What genre is the channel in?
When will it be on air?
And, to close, a pigsandwings question to all the newspapers: why don’t you realize your reader is more irritated by receiving part of the news than he would be by receiving none of the news at all?
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2 comments:
well said; it's absolutely irritating. something like "..to be continued - u have to buy our next edition to know more" type of gestures!
ur blog is a nice reading. i was always fascinated abt the advertising and long ago had a dream to be a part of it. but somehow got trapped in shredded codes :) i liked the analysis you did on the dada-pepsi ad.
Amitav
That is the point. It irritates you, it irritates me, it irritates the whole world.
And yet media houses speak of the chinese wall between editorial and marketing.
No editorial resource would have knocked off the name of the channel unless there was a diktat.
And the sad part -- all the newspapers seem to have made the same diktat!
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