If you switch on any channel today you hear shrill voices. It could be just the market going down or going up. And the anchors talk like they know perfectly why the market went up or went down. It is amazing to see people going wrong everyday coming the next day with similar views.

1. Apart from making astrologers look scientific I have no clue what other purpose it serves…I am not sure whether they are missing the big picture of how a person should create wealth. Are people really interested in what to buy and what to sell on a 24×7 basis? really? Has any channel thought about this? and how do you make a distinction between a Cnbc (with all its language avataars), ET, Bloomberg, Zee,..and apologies if I have missed out a few more of the 30 odd channels. Are they just copying each other? did any of them do a survey on what the clients really want?
2. A big part of the wealth has moved to mutual funds – and there is a need for programs EXPLAINING each fund scheme – start from the most popular scheme and describe the philosophy, how to invest, how long to stay, purpose of the fund, etc. After all if you can devote a 24 minute program (baaki to ads honge)..you can do a 30 minute program. I can dare say that more people are interested in Icici Prudential dynamic plan than people interested in knowing whether Tata Elxsi is a good buy or not.
3. I have not seen any program on any channel talking EXCLUSIVELY on asset allocation, Investment philosophy, retirement planning, goal based investing. Caveat: I am the author of a book ‘You Can get rich too!: Goal based investing’. Obviously plugging for a slot…
4. If the programs are NOT EXCLUSIVELY devoted to financial planning ideas, then they will not seriously look for topics and people to talk on them. Right now it is a program which does many things including financial planning so priorities are different
5. A DIY on financial planning, a program on how to select an advisor,…etc. will be well accepted..
6. The problem with trading kinda content is it is interesting to create and interesting to consume. The question to ask is how useful it is. I run a small blog with no seo efforts, no marketing, no nothing – and yet about 7000 people visit it everyday. Surely with a little bit of marketing, videos, and classroom software, a big market can be created.
7. Sadly financial porn is easy to create and more easy to sell. Clearly it is a case of Pizza vs Mom’s home made roti. We all know that roti is good for health, but getting the kids and the older people to see the LONG TERM impact on health is not easy.
8. Sadly the advertiser is not bothered about the content he is interested in the people who come to watch. The advertiser will start liking the new content and if there is an interactive audience I do not see why there will be no ad support.
9. The kind of content that I create is dated forever – and there are many such people who need an out reach medium. What the television in particular has is current and it is doubtful whether it can ever be aired again. They need to get ‘experts’ who do a high decibel ‘BTST’ – buy today sell today kinda shows.
10. If you see the Rs. 4000 crores kinda SIP that is happening on a monthly basis, clearly the ‘hobby’ of stock picking is dying. Or at least reducing in importance – this of course is my view..and what the media owners think is more important.

I hope somebody smart reads this blog piece and decides to do something about it. I have a vested interest in this working out well.