What if a New York consultancy were to be entrusted with a makeover of the public broadcaster? AJITH PILLAI says one could expect robotic anchors and government-paid news.
Courtesy: The Hoot, 28th February 2013
Dipped in Witriol
AJITH PILLAI
Why is public broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) often declared dead by the pundits, suddenly making the honchos of private news channels reach for antacid? Well, if the recent aggressiveness of the smart, new-look anchors on state-run television’s prime time news was not enough, a set of recommendations that Prasar Bharti CEO Jawhar Sircar has kept in his pending tray is causing considerable heartburn. Reason: there is nothing to suggest that he may not implement them in Doordarshan (which his organisation controls) or that I&B minister Manish Tewari will not push him into doing so with the 2014 general elections looming large on the horizon.
According to reliable sources (the unreliable guys could not be tapped since they are holidaying in Wellington, Nilgiri Hills), the proposed DD makeover plan which has set off subterranean shock waves (5.4 on the Richter scale) among private channels, comes all the way from New York City. ‘Doublespeak & Tripleheard’ is the agency that is responsible for creating what is being described as a possible existentialist crisis for the TV news business. The outfit is run from Central Park by a Chinese (who claims he re-discovered Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle while checking on whether burgers sold by McDonalds are of uniform quality) and an Indian computer geek who has done extensive research for the tobacco industry on smoke signals as an alternative to mobile telephony.
The two, who go by the moniker Yen and Sen, were contacted by an influential Prasar Bharati official on a US tour. The latter was apparently impressed by the way the duo laughed at those walking in the Park who weren’t sure they were moving forward because they didn’t know which way they were facing. “These guys echo the very words of John Lennon from the Imagine album and are geniuses who can turn around Doordarshan News,” the official said in a report he sent to his head office from the Colorado Desert. He had flown there hoping to find Rajasthani food since he believed that people of all arid lands swear by the same cuisine, sing the same folk songs at Delhi’s five stars and willingly subject themselves to literary festivals of the Jaipur kind.
Anyway, that aside, Yen and Sen’s report ‘DD News: Call a Spade a Biscuit or a Cookie’, even though it has not been considered for implementation yet, is worth taking a look at. It perhaps gives us a peep on the shape (or shapelessness) of news to come. So, let us share excerpts without much ado:
The Anchor for All Seasons: DD must create a robotic figure—someone who is the sum and substance (or lack of it) of what makes news and non-news happen 24x7. He/she should be programmed to shout, scream, flash eyebrows, look menacing and become excited even while discussing cabbages and kinks or, for that matter, kings. The ideal candidate must have qualities that reflect the pluses and minuses of popular anchors on news channels and should in future, when the situation demands it, not hesitate to pull a toy gun to get a guest to make a statement injurious to him.
More at : http://www.thehoot.org/web/Door-to-door-Darshan/6635-1-1-10-true.html#
Non recruitment of staff has been the cause of stagnation in DD and AIR. Even the policies of the central government are not trickling down to the common folks in some of the opposition administered states.
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