More News Is Good News

Television news in India in the 1980s meant Doordarshan till NDTV came along and changed things forever. Beginning with a half-hour show on Doordarshan, The World This Week, in 1988, NDTV went from strength to strength. In 1995, it aired India’s first-ever private news broadcast, with Prannoy Roy’s announcement – ‘It’s eight o’clock and this is The News Tonight coming to you live’ – marking a paradigm shift in news media in the country. It then went on to become an independent broadcaster in 2003.For over twenty-five years, the name NDTV has been synonymous with news and credible reporting in India. It is a pioneer in Indian TV journalism, breaking new ground and creating a whole industry. More News Is Good News records this phenomenal journey through the experiences of reporters, anchors, editors, camerapersons and producers, many of whom are now household names, including Prannoy Roy, Vikram Chandra, Ravish Kumar, Barkha Dutt, Sonia Singh, Sreenivasan Jain, Vishnu Som, Nidhi Razdan, Maya Mirchandani, Rajdeep Sardesai and Shekhar Gupta, among others. In the process, it provides a ringside view of the unshackling of the economy and the media, the dilemmas involved in reporting wars and natural disasters, the frontlines and the fault lines that defined the country, news coverage that morphed into nationwide public campaigns and altered the way we respond to the world around us.In the telling of these stories which reflect the countless realities of a changing nation, More News Is Good News also charts the fascinating evolution of news television in independent India over a quarter century.