Saturday, December 24, 2005

Operation "Your-Name-Here"

Back in the days of yore (ok... maybe not that back), I remember the only news channel on Indian television sets was DD-News. It wasn't as much a channel as it was a time slot of around 9-ish in the night. Of course, the only channel in those days was DD so it didn't make that much of a difference. Then arrived cable and it was so expensive (cuz u had to buy those dish antennas yourself) that only certain high-and-mighty could afford it. Soon those idiots were using those dish-antennas to store rain-water as the cable-wallahs arrived on the scene and soon we were all friggin addicted!

Now, back to the news!

So after the corporations realised that news channels could do business, they started launching channels one after the other. Soon, out of a channel band of about 50, 10-12 were news channels. Now with so many news channels competing for the viewership, you would think that there would be quality programming when you turned the TV on.. Aaaa! Wrong Guess! I come home one day from the college to find a news channel reporting on some bozo predicting that he was going to die at 5 in the evening and half-a-dozen news channels flocking the village to see if he's right. Well, the clock strikes 5 and he's 5 kilos-heavier if anything, owing to the tons of fruits and laddoos he's had to this point from his now 100-something devotee following! So, now each news channel has a reporter trying to justify the 2-hour waste of time with reasons such as how they are unmasking hoaxes like this!

A newer trend to this idiocy is the use of the term "Operation" for every sting operation the channels are involved in. Soon, everyone realised that they aren't involved in many sting operations but the term does sound cool enough to be used over and over. So, now any news item is an operation! We have operations ranging from 'Operation Duryodhan' to 'Operation Majnu'!! Now clearly they're bound to run out of these cool (apparently) names some day. That day will see advertisers paying good money to use their names in designating these operations. So, now long from now, you'll have 'Operation Baygon' talking about how the fashion world is crazy about this new haircut. Post that era, maybe they'll have a 'SMS the most entries n get an operation named after you' contest! That wondrous day, I'll stop paying the cable guy and hang myself with the cable wire. Start SMSing now... maybe you can get your name on that news item!

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