Posts Tagged ‘Entertainment’
Couple of days back I was watching our legendary film director K Balachander (KB) on an interview on NDTV-Hindu. Balachander has always struck me as a person who has very naturally transitioned to the modern cinema and has not be caught in a time warp like few others from his generation. He has been pretty gracious in appreciating work of current directors and has often publicly praised them in the media. KB also was the first movie director who forayed into satellite television. He produced and directed various down to earth, high quality television serials.
His serials had the realism and were never over the top. So that brings me to the current topic, when the interviewer asked him about the current television scenario, he said that news channels are more interesting to watch than the mega-serials and reality shows. I kind of agree with him. If you think, aside from the sports channels and News channels, the rest of the programming can be categorized into, movies, serials and Reality shows.
The mega serials are over the top, hard to believe and mostly a cry-fest. The reality shows contrary to their name has hardly any realism and movie shows are well, movie shows. The advent of reality shows in Indian television has eaten into the primetime for most of the TV channels in India. The shows look like scripted and rehearsed with no realism. They are also sometimes inappropriate and not a “Watch with the family” types. So let’s look at what the news channels bring to the plate. They have the same star interviews, news around the world, debate shows, showcase sports and other talents across India.
To be frank I feel that a channel like NDTV-Hindu has much more interesting programming compared to probably a Sun TV or a Sony TV. The news channel interviews do not use the regular superlatives to introduce an actor, like probably a Karan Johar does on “Koffee with Karan”. The interviews are much more interesting to watch and actually give a better perspective of the person than watching them on a regular entertainment channel. There are few exceptions though like Star Vijay which has much more balanced programming. Having said that I believe that to each their own and respect individual preferences.
But do I enjoy watching a NDTV-Hindu more than a Sun TV? Yes I do and I totally agree with KB sir. He also said that he would be directing another television serial pretty soon and I am sure that he will bring the necessary realism to television which has been missing altogether in recent times.
Lunch time talk
Posted on: April 17, 2008
During lunch time my friends and I normally discuss about something or the other to kill time. The topics of discussion range from Sports to Politics. We discuss about Tendulkar as well as Sharukh Khan. Sometimes even controversial topics from the happenings in the current Indian politics. Couple of days back we were just sitting at the table talking about the comics we used to read when we were kids and suddenly the topic changed to the cartoons we used to watch. Everyone remembered the spiderman, He-Man and the other cartoons which used to come on DD at that time.
When we were growing up we just had one channel on television and had no options but come to think of it that was not a bad thing. We were wondering as to how the quality of programs in television has changed in the last 15 years or so. Even though the options for us as kids was very less the quality of entertainment was actually much better then what we have right now. The content and the variety of programs on DD was actually much better than the “Mega” serials we see on all TV channels these days. Those days not having too many options made sure that kids went outside to play more often than what we see from kids in this generation.
These days the programs on television is mostly based on movies. Every channel will have same type of programs which will be like Movie Reviews, Song Countdowns, Movie Countdowns, Star interviews and inbetween those lots of ads. While these programs are entertaining it doesnt stop us from flipping channels at regular intervals. There are not too many programs these days which are different and unique and which does not touch upon cinema. Things were different 15-20 years back, we had lots of quality entertainment of DD those days. Even though all of us cursed DD for their constant interruptions and their sometimes annoying coverage of sports and stuff, they did have some great content.
Nobody can forget the classics such as “Vikram Aur Betaal”, “Fauji”, “Byomkesh Bakshi”, “Malgudi Days”, “Nukkad” etc. DD was great for kids too with cartoons such as Spiderman, He-Man, Shazzam, Junglebook and also some serials such as Indradanush which as a kid I used to love to watch. The variety was great I have missed out so many other great DD seriels and programs which we used to enjoy watching those days with less ad breaks. Television used to be true family entertainment. Parents never had to worry too much regarding inappropriate content if watching with kids. These days parents are always at high alert making sure that they change the channels at the right moment mostly to some sports or discovery or to some news channel.
Well even though I used to hate Door Darshan at that time, when we look back the best TV viewing experiance was only when we just had one channel. Anyways thats my opinion as I cannot stand the nonsense dished out these days on television in form of entertainment. Well DD might have taken a backseat these days with the advent of cable networks in India but in terms of quality of content they were way ahead.
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