Monday, February 11, 2013

TV then and now!

I belong to the late seventies generation  ,so when we were growing up  Doordarshan was the only channel and our curiosity for animation was satisfied by mickey mouse cartoons every Sunday.That's it. Later on when we grew up  , we loved Buniyaad /hum log/Kachi dhoop/hum chaar/karamchand .of course Vikram Betal was eagerly awaited as well :).Ok I am becoming too nostalgic.But I have heard  many tell me this , that those TV days were the real days.It was all quality .There were just thirteen episodes and yet what an impression they have left on us.  The characters are still in our hearts.  Karamchand and his carrot,Betal's silver hair ,  Ramayan, Mahabharath   ,can anybody forget them?  Does anybody remember afternoon transmission?  and of course our own dose of bollywood through "Chitrahaar SadaaBahaar"  and Sunday morning's "Rangoli". The list goes on and on...

Why are they still in our hearts? Its probably due to the little/measured doses of variety every week  which only made us ask for more. It was so precious for us.  But that is only one end. The TV shows in itself were of such high quality in terms of creativity,casting etc (I am not referring to the transmission quality(remember "rukavat ke liye khed hai?")) . The script was so strong and bound that it stood above everything else. Be it Buniyaad,Premchand's stories or Ek Kahaani(based on stories from all over the world like O.Henry etc) .  The respect for the programme grew automatically just by the script of the show. Also the best of Indian talent had only this channel to showcase their talent which kind of made sure that the cream of India was showcased to the spectators.  One more important factor was the monitory value for the show.Because the competition was almost nil ,there was no fear of losing out any money. 

But alas! the advent of cable TV changed all that. Zee TV,Start Plus entered the market.They started making their own shows.The talent got divided. The marketing strategies became more business like . More the TRP ,more the profit. Let creativity go to hell. Audience loves romance? Then just give them romance every minute even if the scene doesn't require it.  That was the state. And of course ,the entrance of Ekta Kapoor changed the whole scene all over again.The trend she started in late nineties is still continuing till date. Mediocrity has creep-ed into all the shows with no room for any novelty. And who can forget reality shows. I have no idea why we all love people shouting at each other openly on TV.They are crying,rolling in mud,abusing each other ,stealing girlfriends, tearing each other apart.And audience is loving it.

God please give me the eighties television. I wish somebody sets up a channel which will have only re-runs of the oldies and I am sure many like will watch it. What say guys?

1 comment:

Sriram_85 said...

I still remember how awesome chitrahar and rangoli, Surabhi and all that used to be.. we used to wait for sundays for those.. Then the ramayan and the movies on sundays... Even after they had introduced a new channel called DD2 and included programmes like junoon, shanti etc it used to be fine. But it was kind of when the ramanand sagars Krishna serial started we began to notice the changes... They used to show faces of some 10 characters in a row with a different background music and then after 5 minutes, there would be a break... Ekta kapoor literally killed the so called existing good programs that were aired on tv (Though i admit even i watched kahani ghar ghar ki & Kyunki for quite sometime). But these days its even more painful experience to watch these programs.. No wonder most of the current GenX go for english tv shows like "Friends" or "Big Bang Theory" which are more sensible compared to the tv programs shown in Star Plus et al