ET Now - The No. 1 Business News Channel

ET Now can now rightfully claim to be the No. 1 biz news channel with 42 % viewer-ship as declared through survey by TAM recently. I too agree with it as it has now become my favorite biz news channel. Earlier when the channel was new there were so things I was disappointed with, but now I think channel’s management must also have taken notice of its flaws and corrected them.

First of all, ET Now’s ticker management has improved a lot. In fact, now it’s even better than that of TV18. I think the experience of Ayesha Faridi must have come in handy in this regard. The channel has hired talented anchors and even attracted well-known anchors from other news channels like Ayesha Faridi, Nikunj Dalmia, Manisha Gupta, Tanvir Gill, Shaili Chopra and many others. So now it has got the best team of News Anchors. It seems everything is falling in right places for the channel.

On the other hand, CNBC TV18 is getting worse day by day. It’s losing its sheen now. It has lost most of the anchors which were the back-bone of the channel to ET Now. Moreover, it seems it is unable to get rid of boring anchors like Lata Venkatesh who is not fluent and lacks the flow (which is the hall-mark of a good news-anchor). She is very clumsy and lacks spontaneity. The channel has now only three-four talented news-anchors like Udyan Mukhejee, Mithali Mukherjee and Sonia Shenoy. Besides, the quality of its programming is also deteriorating.  

ET NOW - So Far a Flop Show

It has been more than a year since ET Now –the new baby of Times Group- went on air, but it is nowhere close to its rival business channel CNBC TV-18. Although it has been able to attract many high profile anchors/presenters from other rival channels, it has failed to deliver in terms of contents. It now has one of the best team of anchors with likes of Ayesha Faridi, Tanvir Gill, Andy Mukherjee, Manisha Gupta, Devina Menon and Avanne Dubhash to name a few. But the channel has failed to utilize their talent well.

Firstly the camera work and visualization is much cluttered and not at all appealing. There are so many things on the screen- with two tickers, so many anchors and analysts in small box-like frames, recommendations from brokerage houses flashing all the time and many such distractions. All these things render the anchors hosting the show totally useless person with no focus on them. If it is going to be like this, then the day is not far when we will get to hear only the voice of an anchor with all the different kind of tickers and flashes all over the TV screen to strain your eyes.

Secondly, the stock tickers of ET Now are quite slow in comparison to other business channels. With so many stocks it takes ages to complete from A to Z stocks. Besides when there is an ad-break the tickers leave their continuity and are randomized. The only thing good about the tickers is that the number of stock is much larger in comparison to other biz channels. Otherwise the ticker management of this channel is quite poor.

Thirdly, the recommendations of stocks flashed continuously are quite boring. It only helps the brokerage houses at the cost of gullible investor/small traders. Moreover many such recommendations are absolutely non-sense. Beside there are many small things which needs correction if ET Now wants to compete with CNBC TV-18.