I LOVE You, TV. Review on Changing Face of Indian Television

DISCLAIMER: This is a humour piece that’s not meant to be taken seriously. Potshots at various clichés should be taken in the right spirit. It does not mean to offend and anyone unintentionally offended by any statements should realize the same. Whew wipes sweat off brow such a serious beginning, at the end of this though, you’ll be laughing your head off…(innocently mother swear)

I admire television. It has been like a father to me, it taught me about religion, truth, wisdom, morality, that good always triumphs over evil (unless you watch the NEWS), basically life but more importantly hold your breath here it taught me about SEX (ahem ahem!) …sex education that is. It also taught me that wardrobe malfunctions are the highlight of the superbowl and that people actually watch 4th umpire with Cheeka on DD (Damn, I knew you wouldn’t believe me).

My guru ‘Da Man’ tells me that the message television always gives is that the need for morality and truth are actually nothing compared to the need for a fair and lovely complexion (fair and handsome too). Many a child who watches excess television will go down in history – and also in English and Arithmetic, he tells me. Disregarding his statements, I switched it on and started watching the most interesting channel - GOD TV (Motto: “God loves you ! So send us money”). No, seriously I was about to watch a big premiership football match.

SPORTS

I clicked away as fast as my fatigued, fumbling fingers would function (Look Ma, I’m alliterating!) and stopped on sports. I’m a big Man-Utd fan and we were kicking some serious Chelsea butt. 'Da Man' tells me that football players are often good at sustaining a major injury to catch their breath. A player will bump into another player (or a layer of air) and will fall dramatically to the ground wriggling and screaming that the referee get his lawyer (to write his will since he might not survive) or atleast give a foul and free-kick. The referee normally ignores the player who, after a while, gets up, and continues playing. Some players suffer 4 to 5 fatal injuries per game. That's how tough football players are.

K Serials

Suddenly, there was a loud bong. You know those times in your life when everything seems beautiful, and you would wish time would stand still, so that you can live in that moment forever. This was certainly not one of those times. I recoiled as, horror of horrors, the clock said it was time. Before I could blink (280 nanoseconds to be specific), my grandmother had switched to the saas-bahu ‘rona dhona ’ that permeated my ear lobe and sent special alarm signals like ‘Help! Stop! Nahin!’ and ‘ek, do, teen, char, Band karo ye atyachar!’’ to my brain.

REALITY TV

I sulked a bit, since the live football game I was watching was interrupted, and started thinking about the kind of programs that we view nowadays. First up, reality TV. This crazy trend has come Fed-Exed and imported from the west. You can do anything from becoming a singing sensation, a roady, an item bomb, or India’s super geek, to marrying a millionaire, just by entering a TV reality show. In fact, tears collected from Fame Gurukul are currently almost the size of Cuba and multi-cuisine restaurants that serve insects are impressed with the publicity given to their specialities on Fear Factor. I, for one, simply refuse to go so low and eat frogs testicles whatever be the monetary reward (though barbequed cockroaches are rather tasty! Mmm.. Kidding….)

REMIX N AWARDS

How can we forget those remix music videos?(Reuters tells me that 90% men aren’t complaining, PS: the other 10% are gay) And who watches those thousands of awards shows, God alone knows (probably only the winners and their families). I can already imagine the day when Shah Rukh Khan has got more awards than Sachin has scored runs. I need not remind you that the saas-bahu serials take the cake and eat it, and then take more cake, capturing the imagination of a million zombies that seem to have nothing else to do other than watch ‘rap’ with a ‘c’ in front of it. Don’t you just love the WHOOSH wHoOsh whOOsh (3 times for effect) sounds of these KEKTA SHOWS, but love is a strong word for those special effects, so to better express myself – ill usehate hate hate.

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Should we watch these programs full of (write name of animal here)-shit, sleaze and stupidity where brains are strictly ‘NO ADMISSION’? Since I believe strongly in the freedom of choice, I’ll let you decide what the answer is (NO).

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ADVERTISEMENTS

This brings me to a problem that plagues all of us couch potatoes – ads. You surely know that our celebrities - whichever field they might be in - earn most of their moolah from their Ads. The average duration of advertisements this year has increased from 15 seconds to 30 (puts hand on head and screams wildly Nahin!!! Not longer fair and handsome ads). A sponsor is the only television viewer who enjoys the commercials more than the programs. For the general public, the agony of advertisements can be understood by all who watch prime time movies that tend to have this uncanny knack of stretching a 3 hour Bollywood extravaganza to a 5 hour extrabackandeyepainanza. This plague of advertisements continues Apollo tyres (unstoppable). Asian sky shop and teleshopping (who can forget Sanjeev Kapoor tandoor) are the shows that would run all day long in some versions of hell (Hell v1.4 beta to be specific). Commercial breaks come to us faster than express Shoiab Akhtar.

Guruji ‘Da Man’ says that today violence and smut are everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your televison without seeing them (although sometimes you have to hunt around). How can we, the Indian public, he says, remain sanguine in the face of these programs? Especially when we do not really know what “sanguine” means?

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So, I reckon, by 2006 A.D. (haha! pun), the programs will be the breaks, and we’ll have exclusive ‘ads only’ channels including Star plus plus, Adiscovery and Adlines Today. The future, my friends, is just going to have to wait, because right now there is a commercial break going on.

So there you are, it’s now up to you to make an informed decision whether the idiot box is worth wasting time on. Maybe its time you take care of your eyes. It’s your mind, your eyes. And, as such, right now, it wants to

watch…

some TV.

Da Man requests your comments and says “Give it to me baby, aha aha!!”

Comments are like television – I just can’t get enough of it.