3. The still more curious case of a dry subject producing a good discussion driven by the anchor: How will a possibly poor monsoon affect the economy? You should read newspapers for that kind of stuff. But the NDTV talk on the subject showed news TV can do better than it usually does. It helped of course that two smart politicians, Prithviraj Chavan and Suresh Prabhu, and economist Subir Gokarn were on the panel. But the anchor interventions helped, too. It struck me, watching this, what difference a little prep work can do to talk TV anchoring. Let me be careful: may be all anchors always do great prep work. But it doesn’t always show. In this case, it did.

4. The curiousest case of a not-so-good discussion driven by viewer questions relayed via the anchor: NDTV had Sibal answering questions sent in by viewers and read out by the anchor. Democracy doesn’t work in everything — this was proof. Inevitably, the questions were widely disparate and sometimes strange (will primary education be made free? Government primary education is already free). It didn’t help that Sibal and the anchor were framed inside the pages of what looked like a moth-eaten book (educations is about books, did you get it?). Some of the anchor’s own questions were curious. In the context of madrassahs, Sibal was asked with a severity not merited by the issue, what do you mean by secular education? What he meant was obvious, but he dutifully repeated it.

... contd.