I worked with Arnab Goswami, this is how he changed Indian TV news

Ever since the news about Arnab Goswami quitting Times Now broke, Twitter has gone into overdrive. Jokes, memes and witty one-liners galore, everyone on social media has an opinion to share about the man. He may not be on Twitter but in recent past he has consistently set the agenda on social media. Seldom has the news of an editor quitting a news organisation created such buzz.

During my short stint at the Times Now Mumbai newsroom in 2009, I had an inside view of how Arnab and his team were trying to write the grammar anew for TV news in India. For a generation of viewers who had grown up with NDTV, this style was nothing short of a shock.

The jury may be out on how good or bad his formula was, but it sure had the desired impact - breaking the clutter and propelling his channel to the number one spot in ratings in the highly-competitive English news genre. So, what exactly did Arnab Goswami do at Times Now that has forever changed the rules of the game in the Indian TV news ecosystem?

Editorialising news: In a saturated English news space, where every other channel is playing the same news, value addition to news is what sets one apart. Arnab did exactly that. He killed the nuance for black and white answers with instant and populist editorial judgments that audiences loved.

He carefully created an image for himself as an editor who openly takes sides. Moving away from the traditional view that gives the audience both sides of a story and allows it to deduce. During a marathon orientation meeting inside the hallowed Times Now edit room, Arnab once told us point blank - opinion was good and audiences love it. He carefully used the English-speaking middle class' disdain for the political class. Thus his "act" of taking on the mighty politicians or bureaucrats in a sense acted as a catharsis for the middle class, which was happy to vent its ire on social media rather than taking to the streets in protest. Arnab was happy doing it for them from his studio.

Everyday spectacle: Night after night on weekdays (sometimes even on Sundays), Arnab and his team were diligently putting up a spectacle at 9pm. Perhaps, having realised that in order to make news "entertaining" it was necessary to create one. Thus, over the last few years, incidents on its flagship show Newshour became news themselves.

Gimmicks like showing an empty chair on-air during a panel discussion with multiple guests if one political party or individual refused the channel's invitation, or when Times Now reporters went out on the streets with measuring tapes to map potholes were often used. A visual spectacle or tamasha helps keep the audience hooked. The concept of a sober discussion/ debate also changed.

Often the brief for the "Guest Relation" team working at the channel was to get people who would start fighting on air when provoked. In fact, the credit for the popularity of a whole new generation of party spokespersons on TV goes to Arnab. For producers working behind the show, nothing is better than a good, loud, ugly verbal slugfest on air. The more the tamasha, the better the viewership. All of it carefully orchestrated. Does it come as a surprise why those Pakistani guests repeatedly appear on the show despite their abject humiliation on air?

GFX-heavy dynamic screens: Times Now also revolutionised the Indian news TV screen by augmenting the traditional audio-visual experience. It introduced a "dynamic" screen which would create a sense that something was happening all the time.

The traditional "ticker" was done away with, replaced by multiple graphic bands (known as supers in newsroom jargon) with superfast animation effects, transitions et al. At no point in time is anything on the Times Now screen static. It was also made text heavy with similar information written on the top and the bottom of the screen. A senior once explained to me the logic behind the concept. "People often watch news on mute. So we must explain the story in words written on the screen."

Use of dramatic music: Those of us who have been students of broadcast journalism were always told that the primary tool of storytelling for a TV journalist was audio and visual. Thus the "audio" is as important to the story as the visual. But at Times Now, producers decided to do away with the original ambient audio of the news feed (footage) and replaced it with dramatic music to make daily news packages (news capsules) sensational.

It was the essential masala or tadka to spice things up for viewers. This style had been in practice with the Hindi news channels for a long time and Times Now was the first to replicate it in the English genre.

Output-centric TV news: There are two essential departments in any news channel - the input and output departments. Input consists of all the reporters who are out on the field collecting news and sending it back to the headquarters. It is the Output department that "packages" the raw information sent by reporters, editorialises it, treats the footage and does the value addition.

In fact, all the processes that I've spoken of are done by the Output. At Times Now, often, it was the Output desk that took the final call on how to treat a story based on what editorial stand Arnab would take even if it is contrary to the ground reality being reported by the correspondent.

At Times Now, it is the producers who mostly write the PTC (piece to camera) for reporters rather than the reporters themselves. Also, the reporters mostly don't write their own scripts, but just send basic information to the desk to develop the story. This style of operation greatly cuts down the time between putting the information on-air and when it actually happens.

For Arnab and team, breaking news faster than everybody was more important than the traditional wisdom of getting the facts right. Perhaps, this explains why the channel faced a multi-crore defamation suit by a retired judge for incorrectly using his image on screen.

Self-indulgent promos: Like it or not, Times Now has a superb promo team working for Arnab. Given my understanding of the Arnab-style functioning (having attended edit meets), not just the news pegs but even ticker lines and promo copies were dictated by the man.

Never before had a new channel taken on rivals, called them names openly. The term TRP had for long been in public consciousness, mostly used to abuse news professionals. Thus, Arnab simply chose to play to the gallery. It didn't matter whether the audience understood the nuance of the rating system. As long as you bombard them with the "we are No1" promos, they will believe you - a trend that has caught up with TV channels. The motto perhaps is: if you can't convince them, confuse them.

Accosting subjects: Another concept that Arnab and his team introduced to news TV in India is the technique of "accosting". In simple terms, it is nothing but gate-crashing a person who is unwilling to speak out on camera. The idea was to create visual drama that the Times Now reporter was asking "tough" questions and the subject (person in question) was "evading".

Times Now reporters, in fact, mastered this fine art. Thus, they would try accosting people sitting inside a moving car with their window panes firmly shut. The camera would roll chasing the reporter who, in turn, chases the subject.

The camera records the question asked by the reporter, but most often there is no answer from the other end (many a time because the person has not even heard the question sitting inside the car) and then the reporter looks into the camera announcing: "As you can see so-and-so refused to answer our direct questions/ faced with tough questions by Times Now he/she evaded et al".

If the endeavour is to seek a response from the other side as is required in journalism, this "accosting" technique serves no purpose. Yet, it is a hit among TV channels simply because it creates drama.

To his credit, Arnab Goswami and his team have immaculately implemented such new strategies, risked innovative concepts, and have been rewarded with success. The Arnab style or news template has caught the imagination of not just the audience, but also editors across the industry with most channels now replicating it.

As a professional TV journalist, I think this style has done more harm to the art of TV reportage than good. Any strategy that places the audience at the core to decide what should go on-air runs the risk of obfuscating reality. The question is, can we give the audience what it wants or should we - as gatekeepers - decide what they should watch?

For all you know, given a choice, the audience may prefer pornography to news.