Don’t you miss the days of the good ol’ Doordarshan when there was something for each member of the family? The days when the Idiot Box wasn’t so idiotic after all because it treated information and entertainment as two separate entities?
With the advent of the new decade and the word ‘Infotainment’ being added to our vocabulary list. It is a mighty dangerous word if I may say so and it has hit the news channels hard! There seems to be skewed ratio in terms of the information and entertainment we get out of the 24X7 news on our television sets with the latter taking predominance. So we have the breaking news ticker beaming about how a famous celebrity couple broke up or why the elephant crossed the railway tracks in Honululu. And our daily soaps are not limited to the entertainment channels that broadcast them, the sob story of a family with a million relatives moves on to the primetime news as well. In the race for TRPs they’d rather show the misfortune of a fictitious family than focus on the plight of the people.
In the race to catch a billion eyeballs the news channels will now sensationalise the most trivial of issues and with sting operations in order everything just seems to be haphazard and well out of order. They feature everything right from warning you about your seemingly innocent neighbour who might turn out to be your murderer to a panel of socialites who discuss poverty alleviation in the country to spreading panic on finding an unclaimed bag in a public place.
In times when there is much happening around us we do need to stay updated. News 24X7 sure provided you the convenience of time but where is the real deal?
