Can I have those '20 minutes' back..? Please....!!

Very distinctly do I remember the time '8:40 PM' when, long years back, dear Doordarshan used to air SAMACHAR. We, being what we were as kids, used to ignore the Idiot box for 20 minutes and then come back to it for 9:00 PM Dharavahiks. Yet, from whatever times I did watch SAMACHAR, I do remember some faces; Shammi Narang, Ved Prakash, Manjari etc. Sometimes it even was a guess game, who would read news today? After a few years, as teenagers, when there were other similar trips down the memory lanes, we, being what we were as teenagers, used to make fun of the time 8:40. Why on earth 8:40? Why not a more convenient time like 8:30 or 9:00? Why to broadcast news for an odd duration like 20 minutes?

Today, I woke up early. My roommate was awake even before me. He had switched on the TV. I was in ignore mode and carried on with my daily cores. After a while he chuckled. "Siddhish, wow there was no crappy news on TV in past 20 minutes...yesssss" and he switched it off. As if the idiot box wouldn't hold for 21st minute and would blurt out the crap to prevent indigestion. I passed a careless smirk and forgot. Then, on my way to the office, this thought came back to my mind. 20 minutes. Precisely the duration that was sufficient for Prasaar Bharti to capture the entire day of the nation. Today, I am sure news channels will close their shops if they are asked to filter out just 20 minutes of sanity off their entire day of filth. More so, when I ask for sanity, I mean only that much. I am not asking for a sense of national or social responsibility. That is something I have stopped expecting long back. But Dude, I do demand sanity.

Freedom to media used to be a discussion in the times when I had not acquired enough discretion in these matters but being what I am as a 27 year old young man now, I swear I too would have supported it if it were to happen today. When you open your markets, a lot of things come as package deal. Opening up of news space for Private channels is not too distantly related to the historical turnaround of 1991. India's first step towards free markets. While it achieved countless favorable things, it is failing in some aspects for sure. Our Hindi news channels are an example. Although, I am a firm believer of Ayn Rand's theory that 'Free markets are a self correcting mechanism', I fail to visualize if this will correct itself too. May be because I am expecting wrong thing to correct them. I must consider that despite broadcasting uninterrupted filth, these channels do make money.

I would like to quote my friend Siddharth Pandey, 'How does one stop this nonsense, and more importantly WHY..., if this is so popular??' I still do not have an answer. But, this gives me the keyword to weigh Hindi news channels on Ms Rand's scale.

POPULAR. That’s the word. I have to agree that despite the ceaseless stupidity, all news channels enjoy a humongous popularity. If one is to watch news, he/she has two options. Hindi news or English news. English news channels make much more sense when it comes to content but then they are limited to the population that understands English. Hindi news channels (and their other vernac counterparts) have a much better reach and penetration. Nevertheless, It is more surprising to observe that in the cafeterias of two software companies that I have worked so far, Aaj Tak is preferred over English news channels. Needless to say, this time the social strata in question is the one that is considered as intellectual elite. This strata constitutes the bunch of hundred thousandish IT geeks who are charged with adding more than three billion dollars to Indian forex bounty every year. So its easy to infer that these channels do enjoy a viewership among the supposed intellectual lots as well. If that is not proof enough their improving TRPs do say it all. Not to mention the huge advertising revenues they harvest each day. It means that at the end, these probably do not defy Ms. Rand's scale too.

So is there no stopping? What happens to an object that is debased to the roots, meaningless from every perspective and cheap by all standards but is still popular and makes money too? Does that become acceptable? We know it should not but how do we stop it? I don’t know. But now I do understand why Doordarshan had just 20 minute slot at 8:40.

It will probably be impracticable to limit the news airtime to mere 20 minutes now but yeah, a conscious censuring and enforcement of standards that would clearly determine what can be termed as a News-piece-worth-broadcasting should help. I know it sounds like controlling the media and going back in time. But since self correction does not seem a possibility, control is the only solution probably.