Image via Indiatoday.com
The Nation’s Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami is all set to carve his name in the Guinness Book of World Records, by anchoring a Newshour episode with just a handful of empty chairs and, yet, galloping far ahead of his rival channels in Television Rating Points (TRPs).
The Times Now newsroom erupted in celebrations, with the channel releasing a new advertisement featuring a pie-chart with the caption, “1 hour of The Newshour even with empty chairs gets more viewership than all the other channels combined.” Arnab, who has a reputation of being extremely non-interactive off-screen, was surprisingly glad to share his moment of glory with The UnReal Times.
“It happened yesterday night. I was planning to nail Congress on National Herald, the Aam Aadmi Party’s silence on the same issue, the BJP’s silence on the Goa Minister’s statements and of course, the TMC’s schoolboy pampering meted out to Tapas Pal. To my surprise, no one turned up for the debate. Vinod Mehta was the only one who was present, with a glass of fine scotch, but before I could even begin the debate, he collapsed on to the floor due to a booze overdose. So it was just me and 10 empty chairs. But I decided to go through with it, as I didn’t to deprive the nation of its nightly dinner feast,” Arnab told The UnReal Times.
“It turned to be child’s play and just like another Newshour episode, you know. I put across a question to the Congress’ empty chair and immediately said ‘No no no..one second, Mr.empty chair! One second! One Second! One Second, Mr.empty chair! Allow me to intervene, Mr.empty chair! One second, one second! I need to say something here, Mr.empty chair. Mr.empty chair, with all due respect to you and with no offense intended, NO NO, one second, let me complete, Mr.empty chair! Let me complete! No, you see, Mr.empty chair. This channel is not like other channels. Here, we will ask questions that have to be asked and we will not stop until we get some answers.’ There! Wasn’t that already a minute? I just had to keep doing this with the other empty chairs too and in between, speak whatever I wanted to. In short, it was just like any other Newshour episode, with me making sure there was some high-decibel chatter going on at any instant! It really didn’t matter whether there were people sitting on chairs or just the chairs themselves,” a delighted Arnab added. “Phew! It was amazing! We still gobbled up 80% of viewership last night at 9 pm and our initiated hashtag #EmptyChairsSpeakToArnab trended on Twitter worldwide for more than 24 hours.”
The news of the record, however, hasn’t amused Arnab’s rivals one bit. “If this is what journalism is about, then I am glad I am not a journalist right now,” tweeted Rajdeep Sardesai. In an off-the-record conversation over drinks, Headlines Today’s editor-at-large, Rahul Kanwal, told his friend from The UnReal Times and our correspondent Ashwin, “WTH yaar! What does he have that I don’t? I do whatever he does + so much more! I squeal as loudly as I can, I try to get very knowledgeable panelists, I do some super high-tech Gen-Y stuff like heat maps, sentiment analysis and so on, with so much detail and yet, he romps home with all the viewership. Just not fair, yaar! At this rate, even if I perform some daredevil stunts on The Election Express bus, it won’t be sufficient.”
However, Arnab’s rivals at NDTV claimed that they are unfazed and that they have a loyal audience who will always be steadfast to them. “We don’t have to worry at all, mate. No matter what, there is always a huge bunch of Internet Hindus watching every single thing we do, trying to nitpick on flaws so that they can shower abuse on us. So we’ll always be watched, irrespective of what our alumnus does,” NDTV editor Vikram Chandra told The UnReal Times.