One small gripe. Review on NDTV 24x7

As ever, one must begin with history...

NDTV dates back to those ''good old days'' of their flagship enterprise ''The World This Week'' - a weekly programme on ''good old'' Doordarshan, generally aired at 2230 on Friday late evenings. The said programme was a beacon of hope, a whiff of fresh air, and many more things - to the multitudes of quality-starved urban Indians during the license and restrictions raj.

When DD-II gained parlance, NDTV took to airing a daily news programme named ''News Tonight'' at 2200 on weekdays. Again a quality product among staid DD stuff. They then shifted to Star Plus, and subsequently came up with a bilingual 24 hour news channel named Star News. This was a first by any Indian team. More recently, NDTV has come up with two news channels of their own - 24x7 in English and NDTV India in Hindi.

Started together by the legendary newshounds Prannoy Roy and Appan Menon, the former - a doctorate - helms the firm now, after the untimely passing away of the latter.

So much for history.

NDTV did a HUGE disservice to themselves when they fell into the lucrative bait of sensationalism during the recent blasts in Bombay (Hey! I still like to call it Bombay). It only showed how far away Indian news channels still are from the ''dot accurate'' BBC et al.

That apart, the news and features in this channel NDTV 24x7 are of high quality. They flash the headlines (with accompanying music :-) ) almost every 15 mts. They've a scrolling ticker announcing all kinds of news - big and small - on the bottom part of the screen. They've a timer going (fairly accurate). They've regular stock updates, as also sports and weather. Their weather modules also contain a bit of ''pollution watch'', as they call it. The English used is appropriate and comfortable.

Their website ( http://www.ndtv.com) is pretty cool, with appropriate details of news items. Options are available to paying users to view their stuff on broadband or narrowband on the internet.

The news and views are fairly objective, without any discernible slant towards either side. If at all, these guys can only be accused of being patriotic (and in the rare circumstance, jingoistic); but many would not see that as a fault. These guys do not shy away from asking difficult questions to almost anybody. If they have two guests from two opposing (warring?) parties or sides, they see to it that both these persons are equally uncomfortable!!! :-)

Among the negative points, their weather forecast is as bad as any other! They ostensibly follow the simple procedure of predicting (as against forecasting) the maximum temperature for the next day using the formula ''Tomorrow's temp = Today's temp + 2''.

I had mentioned earlier that these guys don't think twice about slamming anybody; but therein lies a gripe of mine (yeah, the same one that I tom-tomed in the title above). The newscasters and anchors are a mite self-obsessed. They only bother about asking what seem to be the right questions, but don't wait for adequate answers to these questions! It gives the impression that they are only bothered about projecting that they have raised great questions, without bothering to persist for a satisfactory answer from the interviewee.

Overall worth the while spent.

Chaps to watch out for: Prannoy Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sreenivasan Jain, Vikram Chandra, Sonia Varma and Arnab Goswami among the studio presenters; and Barkha Dutt, Radhika Bordia and Vishnu Som among the field personnel. Special mention must be made of the retired army guy (whose name escapes my memory this instant) who does the rounds of all the war zones from Kargil to Afghanistan.