Today, Aam Aadmi Party leader Ashutosh broke down Live on Aaj Tak while speaking to Gajendra Singh’s daughter. Gajendra (for those living under a rock) is the recently deceased small farmer or landlord (depending on what you believe) from Dausa, Rajasthan.  The Gajendra episode (I believe it was an accident and not a suicide) is tragic and there is enough to feel terrible about. If not for such an oversensitive and easily-outraged society, there was enough bizarreness to the episode for very effective and cutting satire too, that’s to be saved for another time and another day. But the tears! The tears!

This is not the first time Ashutosh has broken down on TV. Earlier there was this.

And today we witnessed this.

Maybe Ashutosh is a sensitive man but at the risk of sounding like an insensitive prick, I’d like to say – dude seriously!? Although that’s not the point of this piece. The point is that after having gone through the first three steps of the evolution of TV news, it is very likely we are entering the crying phase. I’ll explain.

The hashtag #AshuCries has been trending on Twitter as I write this. I was sitting in office, not watching TV, but the news of Ashutosh crying made me go switch to Aaj Tak. No, I was under no illusion that I would get any more information on the Gajendra episode or on farmers’ issues or any knowledge or value addition to my life. I went to see Ashutosh cry. Simple as that.  It makes for compelling viewing. We’re all human. There is a voyeur in us all.

So what were the first three steps of news?

The Dead Pan. Remember Doordarshan where Salma Sultana and Shammi Narang didn’t twitch a single muscle on their face? DD newsreaders from the 80s could out-bluff the most gifted poker player in the world. Murder, terrorism, hijacks, bomb blasts, Kapil Dev bringing home the World Cup, Indira Gandhi’s assassination – all would be related in a staccato tone by their stoic expressionless faces.

Next came the over-eager, enthusiastic phase marked by Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt (and others from that generation followed). There was emotion, which over the next decade became incrementally high-pitched and screechy. It was breathless and earnest. The mood of the story would be reflected in the style. The war would have a sense of urgency and danger, cricket victories would have celebration, stock-markets hitting historic highs would have CNBC anchors giggling wearing conical birthday hats giving high-fives as confetti and ribbons rained down. After years of Doordarshan’s impassive woodenness, news had discovered emotion and like the first flush of romance was being over-indulged. But after romance has outlived its heartfelt exuberance it was payback time. Enter Arnab.  Enter The Hulk.

Arnab Goswami said enough of this sissy eagerness. It’s anger or nothing. India was angry. It had every reason to be. We were being screwed over with rampant corruption and misgovernance forever and finally Arnab said enough of this shit. If heads aren’t rolling, eardrums will explode and, thus, he initiated the angry phase of TV news. Mission Outrage climbed to Mission Hysteria and the only way Arnab can top this genre is if he punches someone in the face in his studio. The angry outrage formula has ensured he dominates prime time, for well over five years now. In America, the king of this genre is Bill O’Reilly. Like Arnab did in India, O’Reilly dominated ratings with his obnoxious and nasty style on Fox News. And after we have screamed and yelled our lungs out, it’s time to collapse like a heap on the floor and sob our way to the dominant position in news ratings. Enter Ashutosh.

Now with Ashutosh having broken new ground twice, I’m afraid what we might just be witnessing is the ushering in of the crying phase.  If Arnab and O’Reilly are masters of the angry phase of news, Glenn Beck is the master of the crying phase. Observe.

The first time Glenn Beck cried while anchoring, it made news. Suddenly a not-so-well-known TV personality became the superstar of the right wing even outshining Bill O’Reilly for a while. While at Fox News his show, it is claimed, had more viewers than the next three biggest news networks combined, much like Times Now and Arnab like to boast.  Beck dominated news commentary with quivering lip, tears and histrionics for close to a year. In a remarkable coincidence, the thought of the day on today’s Times Of India is his.

A thought for the day quoting Glenn Beck of Fox News in the newspaper owned by the Times Group of Times Now just above an editorial on the Peepli live quality of the Gajendra hanging on the day Ashutosh Sobbed on Aaj Tak.

Who quotes Glenn Beck? Seriously?  And on the same day Ashutosh demonstrated to the nation that while a teenaged girl who had just lost her father held her emotion and hesitantly asked to be allowed an interjection, a sobbing 40-something party spokesman talked over her, immersed in his nauseating self-indulgent rhetoric.

Sambit Patra will have to hand over the mantle of the most ridiculous party spokesperson to Ashutosh.

I am not making a value judgment on crying.  Not to say crying isn’t good. It’s great, it’s cathartic and a much better way to vent pent up emotions than anger or violence. But it’s not the best way to communicate sense. But perhaps it’s a great TV draw. Anjana Kashyap of Aaj Tak demonstrated exactly that as the channel cut to a full screen of rare silence as Ashutosh sobbed to his heart’s content and then bawled his dialogues out. Ms Kashyap milked it with her occasional provocations and interventions. Stellar. It was a test case of how to make TV irresistible. It is being played on loop for well over an hour now.

Arnab mastered the art of outrage. He ranted and railed his way to the top of TV ratings. Glenn Beck mastered the art of the whine. He whined his way to not just sensational television ratings but also to the New York Bestseller lists with his books and the celebrity his sobbing gave him.  Indian news is probably entering that phase now.  But what comes next is what I’m looking forward to most. Humour. After Beck and O’Reilly had milked their fads, Stewart, Maher, Steven Colbert and John Oliver dominate. Once the melodrama and crying game lives its phase, it may be time for wit. And what could be more effective and fun than wit.