Modus Operandi: Democratisation of visual stimuli

Poll vault TV has been the hottest, hippest, most happening thing since TV discovered the mobile phone. It’s also the most intrusive and disconcerting, not to say irritating and pointless. Nothing brought this home more sharply than last week’s Chappell & Ganguly Show Part II. For a while back there, it was the reality talent hunt show of the month. Every news channel ran a poll on Chappell and Ganguly — green band for C and red for G, or blue for C and yellow for G…

The questions were much tougher than KBC’s: which one would be out before the next round of matches? Who do you back? Who should stay and who should go? Who leaked Greg’s e-mail? Like all good reality shows, we had expert opinions that were as wide apart North and South polls — sorry poles. Navjot Singh Sidhu batting for Chappell, Kishore Bhimani for Ganguly, Raj Singh Dungarpur for Ganguly to go and Ashuman Gaekwad for him to stay… Four days we were deafened by views, counter views, lip exercises and of course, the blessed polls.

Overwhelming public view? Hello Chappell, goodbye Ganguly. But was the BCCI listening? Well, it was certainly not paying heed to the public. And why would it when everything seemed ‘fixed’ beforehand? By Monday night we were being told by Dungarpur, first in well-bred English and then English-accent Hindi that the Indian captain and the Australian captain would have to settle for a draw. So when Tuesday afternoon arrived (finally) for the BCCI meeting, the Headlines Today anchor could blithely say, ‘‘…it’s all an eyewash’’. Which means we had been pestered for zilch. Yet, they led us along to expect a battle royale that would see at least one head roll.

It suggests strongly that all that channels care about is to be able to boast of the number of responses they received — 33,000, 35,123…

It’s all part of the numbers game and which is the top news channel. Last week, Star News was Breaking News: we are No.1! It then carried a lengthy feature of self-congratulation on why it was No.1. Well, certainly, its coverage of the Mumbai monsoon floods got it a good rating and since then it has managed to find one salacious story every week to titillate its audience. Last Monday, for instance, it re-ran footage of the Ranchi IG misbehaving with a woman who had come to him for assistance. Unfortunately, all we could see were ghosts because the camera had been clouded by the steamy scenes.

Should TV shows be obscene as in displays of wealth? Ask Shekhar Suman who has begun a stint as anchor of Dial Aur Jeeto (Sahara Manoranjan). His first guest was the actor Rohit Roy. In return for answering a series of fairly easy questions, the actor was gifted (can’t really say he won them) the following: diamond jewellery, an INDIGO Marina car, a 29-inch SVL TV set, a SVL microwave and a Videocon DVD. Shows like KBC also feature stars but their rewards go to charity. We know charity begins at home, but this is ridiculous.