I have never felt like this before – yes I want to stop watching the news channel. I think I had enough of humour episodes till now. This was not how it was back in the olden days (November 1986). Long before the age of cable television, NEWS in India was controlled by the First Fundamental Rights in the constitution which states that “Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s wife” … wait that is from another list, anyway the fundamental rights in our constitution really said something about how to furnish NEWS to an avid TV viewer.
Back in the days of Black and White TV sets the news was controlled by the ruling party in the government. Hence the news which was aired daily was of no use to anyone expect 3 people namely the PMO office, the DD broadcaster and the new reader’s husband. No one cared for any news item except for the last 10 minutes which showed sports and entertainment. Even the weather report for sometime was controlled by the government, it was such a monotony during that time. Then the cable television came which broke the monotony with brand new ideas such as commercials within the news programmer and colour news readers who had a total reading capacity of a deranged turnip.
The television channels for a long time had a set stereotyped format for the news program. This format used to be supplied by the ruling party and gave importance to enhance the image of the government. No real news used to come, even if they came, the television viewer would have received the same news via his/her servant or car driver’s network. 9 out of 10 times, this network news was found to be more accurate than the TV relayed news items.
One needs to introspect on whether we need to view news items such as “State Minister for Law opens a new Bank in a rural area and advices the folks to invest properly and follow traffic rules”. Such news coverage led to the eventual fall of the news program from the producer’s wish list. The TRP rating for these came down drastically till a point where it was regarded that NEWS program was aimed at viewers who had an average IQ of 18 and could differentiate between a Cow and a Bull only if there were 3 help lines available [Most of them choose the 50/50].
In the due course of time, the regional political parties found that the TV was the best medium for communicating to the masses and started using them. The parties found that most of the people were hooked on to these soap operas and hence they started to place their party news just before and after these popular shows. Now these political parties found that there were very few shows and hence started a channel for each so that they need not compete for time slots. This led to the forming of a separate news channel for each party. Today we have a set ground rule that to start a party; you need to have criminal cases against you in the Supreme Court and should have a TV channel solely to air good messages about you.
So in today’s world, if you need to know the exact news you may have to see news in 3 different channels. First we see the ruling parties channel, then flip to the opposition parties channel and then to the allies channel to get the actual reality of the news item. While flipping through, you get a good mix of humour, exercise for your fingers, increase the knowledge on your surroundings.
I practice this exercise solely to vent all my frustrations that I face throughout the day in office and traffic, it really makes me feel relaxed before I gain anger when I find my wife switching the channel back to the soap opera where the protagonist is a humble female whose husband is currently enjoying an extra-marital affair with a female who is divorced twice and is being searched by a gang of drug dealers while the protagonist friend is a very straight police officer who is working under a corrupt official who is the ex-husband of the drug pedaling female. I found this just by watching 3 minutes of the show and all my brain cells revolted to work beyond this if I don’t get to watch a comedy show (ie. News at Nine)
For the benefit of those who do not watch the regional TV news, I will answer some of your thought provoking questions.
Q. What is the use of seeing this NEWS program?
A. It is a good tool for time pass and playing pranks of your friends in office.
Q. Where will these channels get this news items?
A. They hire special writers whose only job is to frame news headlines.
Q. Is there a way to get the real news?
A. Yes, Only a pittance – by asking your servants some drilling questions.
Q. How much do I drill?
A. Depends on your wife’s tolerance level.
Q. But isn't that ethically bad?
A. Shut up.
Q. The papers say there are news items are all a fake?
A. Those are only headlines in papers for them to market. Don’t get fooled by that.
Q. OK, So what is good and bad for me in watching news channel?
A. The good news is that you end up getting relaxed by watching the news and the bad news is that your IQ reduces itself every 3 seconds.
Enough about this – “Oh My god, this can’t be true!!! – They are letting Modi off the hook” – that’s the NEWS for today.
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