The Aaj Tak though being part of the India Today group is a great let down. It seems ever since India Toady received a brow beating at the hands of Outlook in terms of its magazine sales, it has become as an also ran company. The urge to be the market leader as a news channel has somehow gone down the drain.
Aaj Tak has a muddled customer base. Though the bulk of it is in Hindi with English programs fitting in between, it hasn’t been able to create a niche market for itself.
The most irritating aspect of the channel is the huge number of ads and the illogical bifurcation of news items. For example, it has a Khel Aaj Tak section, Immediately after that it has a section called Cricket Aaj Tak. I still can’t understand the reason for this step-motherly feeling towards cricket - in terms of not accepting as it a khel.I presume the primary objective is to gather more ad revenue. However the channel fails to understand that this aspect can be really irritating when a viewer is eager to know about some cricket news !!
The channel also uses unappealing backdrops and the graphics are quite ordinary. Before each section of the news the clipings are quite hackneyed.
There doesn’t seem to be any dynamism in the channel. So is the case with the anchors. There is a general perception that the anchors are low achievers in life, who seem to have very banal opinions regarding most of the issues on which they try to ask intelligent questions. Either the anchors are bad or the technical team supporting them is pathetic.
If the same aspects are compared with NDTV’s Star News. They are very professional and each anchor in himself / herself seems to know a significant amount about the topic at hand. Even if this is cosmetic, the NDTV team should be commended for a job well done.