Delivering News with a twist

Whoever thought delivering news can never be hip should visit Canada.

At least for a long time, we thought delivering news can never be a ”glam” thing. But in comes ETV and a lot of our old notions were thrown out the window. ETV showed how by showing great presentation style, professionalism and most importantly “by doing something new”, you can capture the heart of the audience. But sadly, it has gone one dimensional since then. Right now we are in the middle of a major media boom in our country, but just about all news we see today is an “extended carbon copy” of the ETV style.

So whats the new thingy? Where is the new innovation coming in? Or more importantly do we require to differentiate news?

To take the last question first - hell yeah! When just about 10 channels are fighting for the news viewership, differentiation is the only way they will esnure that audience will switch to their channel for that “extra”. And here’s a cracking example (and also the reason why i talked about going to Canada in the beginning) of how good differentiation can sky rocket the popularity of a news channel.

There is a news channel in Canada which Time magazine said “offers the best international coverage on this side of BBC”. This channel broadcast news to 172 nations with a potential weekly audience of 34 million in US, UK, Australia and other countries. The name of the channel is Naked News.

Their newscasters are like any typical news casters in broadcast TV, but they do offer a “different viewing reason”. With a tag-line “There is nothing to hide” - the newscasters of this channel discuss politics, entertainment, sports - all of them - naked.

Now why would someone watch and rely on news delievered from naked people? Well you have to see it to really understand. But the ratings are sky high and research shows that people believe their news as much (if not more) as any other news channel.

Now i am not saying that the newscasters of our country have to do something that radical to gain TRP, but surely they can innovate. For example, one thing that is always irritating about news is that they dont show much passion. One minute they are showing the death of a young girl and the next minute they switch off to something entertaining - in the blink of an eye and always in the same tone.

So if one of the channels train their news casters to show personal enthusiasm, and treat different types of news differently and with lots of emotion and adopt a tag-line like “We feel what you feel” - wouldnt that differentiate that TV channel from the others? What do you think Channel I, N, R, E, and 1?

Shahriar Amin is the creator of the first brand related blog in Bangladesh (http://shammograffity.wordpress.com).