More noise than news on National News Channels

It is more 'noise' than news these days on National News channels. The only few that were exceptions have also joined the race. Whether this is a useful trend, we will have to wait and see. Watching the CNN-IBN [:http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/04_2007/wearing-patriotism-on-sleeves…|'Face the Nation'] program yesterday, it was irking to see [:http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/author/223/sagarikaghose.html|Sagarika Ghose] repeatedly cutting off [:http://rujuvathu.sampada.net|URA's] words. Even worse, the racket the two ladies made on the screen interrupting each other was just enough to make the viewer change the channel. It is interesting to observe though that this has been prevalent on almost all Indian news channels and the trend is picking up on the local news channels as well (tv9, for instance). If this is a kind of noise, there are other types: the noise of news that is of less use. The 'celebrity' batter served with tinges of spicy masala. The cheap promotions of TV programs, movies with celebrity masala should be rolling in lots of money to the TV channels. **** For once, Cricket has got interesting to watch on TV. Mandira Bedi is less stupid, Ian Chappel and Tony Grieg with Simon have been giving good perspectives of the game and in particular 'Good Cricket'. Charu Sharma seems to have improvised his attitude a bit and has been sensible enough not to interrupt Ian or Tony as repeatedly as he does usually. Good commentary and nice games - the only catch is to keep the mute button on the remote in sight between each over. Down with fever for last couple of days, I got the chance to watch the first half of yesterday's England vs Bangladesh match and the entertaining South African batting the other day. It was surprising though in the morning to read that England struggled to get to the target on what the Cricket greats were referring to as a 'good pitch' for batting before the match.