The Graphical Space...

For the past 3-4 years, we have seen too many emerging Indian News broadcasting channels. I am particularly attached to two of them for peculiar reasons. The most peculiar reason being the Graphics element in them.

One of these news channels emerged from the days of “The World This Week” (aired every Friday nights) on DoorDarshan. I see that as the program which instigated my interests in getting to know about the happenings around the world. At that age all (if not all, at least me) one would really love to do was to play cricket all day, have lots of food in the night, watch Oliyum Oliyum, Buniyaadh and to hit the bed. But it was nice to see the then middle aged man, Pranoy Roy getting us news of all kinds from around the world. I am sure he must be a lover of tablas as his programs title-music was tabla based and that continues to be the same even today with his channel NDTV 24x7. I loved the way he ended up his program then with some interesting bloopers from all around the world.

Then followed his association with Star Plus and Star News, wherein New Delhi Television produced the program for the Star group. And today we see the same guy being instrumental behind India’s top news channel NDTV 24x7. And talking about NDTV's initiative towards Graphics, it has invested in a complete graphical solution from Discreet: High-end visual effects systems with inferno® and flame®, editing and finishing with smoke® and background media management with backdraft™ after the initial stint with 2D graphics.

And which is the second channel that I am attached to? CNN-IBN. It was quite clear that many of the NDTV work forces had moved onto setup this broadcasting channel spear headed by Rajdeep Sardesai. I was really surprised with the quality and content, with which the channel was aired for the first time. I am sure the graphical content is far better than CNN itself.

I keenly follow the nitty-gritty graphic details in both these channels. I liked NDTV’s red (or should I say maroon>) flavored theme. Even though CNN-IBN started of well with great graphics, one could easily find that it was a ditto of NDTV graphic sense. Later I got to know that most of IBN’s graphic specialists were moved from NDTV and that made sense. So what? Were the templates also moved and modified minimally? Though such questions came to my mind, I liked the graphics. But it was odd to see even the transition effects of text being the same on both the channels.

I was eagerly looking forward to either of them changing their graphic presentation style. And my wish was answered by NDTV. Yesterday they shredded their usual graphic presentation style. Usually the text portion which sports the headlines, translation and scrollers occupies a decent amount of space on the screen and only 70% of the screen space would be used for the video.

I personally feel that the change that has been brought about is so cool. The scrolling text and ads are at the bottom most of the screen and still readable. The 3 lines of scrolling text has moved out and now it's just one line. The translation text has a soft black background which pops up and dies whenever necessary. That makes sense as the additional space is consumed only when necessary. It suddenly makes me feel that my 29’ TV screen has grown taller!! That is what space can do! And thanks to NDTV for considering a few other colors than red for the bullets and column blocks.

On the contrary, the content has also gone down. Instead of having all at one shot – i.e., Scrolling of news, ads, weather info, stock, time etc., each news comes on to the screen and moves out gracefully and in a nicely categorized manner as well.

I just love it! IBN, it’s your turn now. Can I expect such simple innovations in the graphical space? Looking forward to such healthy competitions.