The little box with big consequences

The next in line, to thank the TV guys, must be their press companion in arms. Making up for the rather drastic discontinuance of corporate and share issue advertising, are the steadily increasing TV network ads aggressively selling the charms of their prize programmes. Here we have an interesting synergy between two, naturally competing media. In the early days, I recall using TV ads (as the competitor newspapers declined to accept our ads) to drum up readership for one of the leading dailies for their down south edition. Remember how leading newsmagazines used TV ads to grow their readership? The roles have reversed almost completely with little or no ads for press appearing on TV but a host of ads for TV programmes appearing in dailies across the country. What does this say about coexistence in today’s fiercely competitive media world?

Last, but certainly not to be forgotten, are the ad agencies. Not only do these high frequency, at least once a week per programme, advertising campaigns keep the billings rolling in, but they also provide the creative guys an opportunity to work on what are in a manner of speaking, ‘fashion’ products with sometimes topical and almost always complex and frequently changing communication needs.

So does anyone lose? Some spoilsport types might make the charge that all this hype is a result of and a cause of an ‘ought-to-be-tamed’ animal called consumerism that makes people want any or too many of the little pleasures in life, such as entertainment electronics, indulgence food and drinks, fashion rather that utility clothes, toys for kids and adults and so on. Yes, I suppose it can be wrong if this want becomes an excessive obsession. However, let’s give people some credit for hanging on to their common sense despite the barrage of ads and other inducements to buy, buy, buy, buy! Just to show you that I am au fait with the ‘hep’ jargon of today’s hi tech world, I am going to state that in an interesting manner there is a convergence nexus (this last expression is my own unique contribution) at work between TV and print.

Yes, I am using the word ‘print’ quite deliberately as history has shown and will continue to show that the more people watch and learn from TV (especially those who would otherwise have been out of reach of any mass media), the more they want to add to their stock of knowledge and experience. They usually find this in print the press and books. So just, maybe, the group that owes most to these aggressive TV moguls are the peoples of India into whose lives the little box has brought so much. So much that will change their lives. Remember the Berlin Wall destroyed by the force of ‘not to be denied’ aspirations for a better life as seen on TV?