With channel vision, there’s news and news

President Bush visits us daily from the White House on both channels unless he has been upstaged by Dick Cheney — and if Bush does it can Blair be far behind? Please note that, in comparison, our Prime Minister is missing in action.

Alternatively, if you watch NDTV 24X7 and CNN-IBN, you’ll believe that the anti-quota agitation is the only news. We have had more carpet coverage of these protests than you’d find in a 7-star hotel. On the other hand, Hindi channels like Aaj Tak and Star News dig up the latest ghosts in town and regularly present them as the lead characters. So when an entire village emptied out because the interred idol was giving out bad vibes and a new one was one buried to replace it, it was important enough to feature extensively on Aaj Tak’s evening news.

Then, there is always Rakhi Sawant. Yes, the actress-dancer-past-mistress- at-exhibitionism was not just headline news, she was the news on Star News, for starters. They — and she — were obsessed with the number of ways in which she could contort her navel, twist her pelvis and rotate her upper storey, sorry body. It was action-packed stuff — Jean Claude Van Damme would have been envious. The lady suffered from the mistaken belief that if she performed for and in front of a police gathering she would escape their censorious eye. Exactly the opposite happened and she ended up as the news of the day last Saturday.

Sawant is not one to pass up any opportunity to promote herself so she happily gave the channels lengthy interviews bemoaning and denying all charges of obscenity (who, me?).

Negative publicity ends where good publicity begins. And thus it came to pass that the film Fanaa, which seemed destined for a quiet opening, managed a fairly spectacular showing. Yashraj Films have Aamir Khan to thank for this. And the news channels, which gave his Narmada comments the generous coverage that got Gujarat or the BJP steamy under the collar and calls for a boycott of the film which led to all this coverage of the controversy just before the film’s release.

All of which nicely paved the way for the Aamir and Kajol for you chat show broadcast across news channels, last Friday. Clearly Yashraj packs in more clout with the channels than Muscles from Brussels does on screen —you could have watched the same show on NDTV 247, Headlines Today, CNN-IBN and God knows which other news channels. Nothing exclusive about it.

Aamir and Kajol were predictably rude about each other: ‘‘You’re brash’’ (Aamir), ‘‘..I would have liked to slap you..’’ (Kajol), ‘‘I was apprehensive about working with you’’ (both), ‘‘You should be a little more patient (Aamir), ‘‘(relax)…go with the flow’’ (Kajol) but there was enough billing and cooing to remind you this was like a paid advertisment. They praised each other and each other again and the film (what else?) but without visible zest. This was overnight open soda stuff. Kajol looked wonderful, Amir cute (even though he kept jumping out of his seat as if Kajol was pinching him off camera) but they didn’t have the camaraderie of Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan (remember Koffee with Karan?). They could have done with the services of said Karan because there were silences when you could tell they wondered what they were doing there. Likewise.