Post the
successful completion
of the electrifying GR8!-ITA
Awards 2009

A
nd just prior to the excitement of 9th (can you believe it, 9th.!) annual Kelvinator-GR8! Women Awards 2010 beginning, I’ve been quite enjoying my little hiatus. I’ve travelled..caught up on some movies and I’ve watched a fair bit of television… I had to catch up on the news too! Of course, I love desi TV but given a chance, here is a wish-list of things I’d love to change or I wish the channels themselves would amend so TV watching can be more satisfying and gratifying!

For starters, I wish Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai and their fellow news anchors would do something about that yellow makeup or cake-paste that they all apply to their faces. Someone like Arnab gets quite “up, close & personal” with the camera and the yellow face on the screen, can be quite bothersome to watch for a full thirty minutes. And, while we’re on the topic of make-up, of course, all the saas’s and bahu’s and devraani’s and jethaani’s need to do something about theirs too… they’re all too fair & lovely. I have quite a hard time telling one from the other.

Next, I wish the news channels would find fresh and appropriate guest speakers to discuss & debate the dozens of controversies we’re bombarded with daily. Whether the controversy concerns politics, sports, scientific matters, the judicial systems, the armed forces, cinema, the media, global warming or item girls the panel of experts, on every English news channel, will always be the same… almost always it includes Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Suhel Seth, Shobha De, Maaroof Reza,Chandan Mitra and the mostly-morbid Manish Tiwari - we can literally see them travelling between the studios! And we’re so totally overdosed!

Also, I wish the channels would stop trying to be first with the news – they’re always reporting half-truths followed by question marks! Is Jonny Depp dead? Is Shashi Tharoor on his way out? Are Brangelina heading for splitsville? You have our attention and you have our eyeballs anyways – we’re going to flip between channels whether you like it or not, so just get your facts straight first & then give us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, please!

The next thing I’d like to change is the amount of airtime that goes into promoting some films… From chasing the star cast, daily, all over the country (they trailed Aamir Khan & showing us his antics for almost 30 days prior to the release of 3 Idiots), to romantically pairing up the hero-heroine and then breaking them up, to blowing up small disagreements into monstrous issues… I’m truly happy for the filmmakers and their neighbours who are all laughing themselves to the bank, but it gets to be a case of too-much-of-a-good-thing. Talk about the film, critique it but don’t go overboard covering the “numerous n continous” promos.

I do have many more points on my wish list but I also need to focus on other stuff going on in telly-land… For starters, the IPL and their quite deliberate snub-Pakistan stand. It was so silly of them to include the 11 boys to begin with, unnecessarily asking for trouble. Lalit Modi & gang better have colossal clout with the home ministry to ensure even more security than otherwise needed – the opening match is going to be a prime target and they all better watch out! Actually, not only the boys from across the border will be aiming to get even, even the Thackeray’s are out to avenge the discrimination being meted out to Indians by the Australians down under. Like I said, all better watch out! Maybe the power-puff girls of the IPL (Priety Zinta, Shilpa Shetty, Neeta Ambani & Gayatri Reddy) should get together and appeal for world peace!

Other than that, Bingo started on Colors with Abhishek Bachchan playing host. The show doesn’t have the most gripping format on earth and Saturday night is anyways not the greatest night for TV viewing (most people I know are out on Saturday night) but we still wish him all the best!..n my humble suggestion would be to change the timing to a sunday morning..(the same format/show used to be aired on IN MUMBAI a few years ago--sunday morning 10 am..n was pretty successful..!!)

Then there are the numerous Yash Raj productions airing weekend evenings on Sony… I’m sure their contract is worth mega-bucks but from the story the TRP’s tell, the response has not been so hot so far. We wish everyone at Yash Raj all the best too and we hope their program head Ravina Kohli (wife of one-time favourite director Kunal Kohli) doesn’t see the same fate as telly-land’s previous Ravina Kohli.

Then there was NDTV’s new, unique, reality TV concept - past life regression with celebrities. The episode I saw had Monica Bedi apparently under a hypnotic spell. Instead of her telling what she experienced in her past life, the doctor was doing all the talking! And, then the doctor decided to ask her a question about her husband in her past life n whether he was back in her present life..n the very under- the-spell.. Ms Hypnotised Bedi says “I will not tell” – Stop trying to make idiots out of us, please!

And finally, to end on a positive note, there was Zee’s 2nd season of Dance India Dance… thoroughly entertaining… brilliant dancers and brilliant performance. A great watch!

And, on that happy note, until next time… Happy reading!

ANU RANJAN
anu@indiantelevisionacademy.com