I was in class eight when Junoon was the biggest hit television series with the people of Tamil Nadu. The not-so-correct Tamil translation of the hit Hindi series was so popular with Tamilians, that my fellow classmates would discuss the series at school more often than they would discuss cultural events or P.T classes. Eventually, the virus spread about, and cable TV became an obsession by the time I moved to class 12. But of course, our home didn’t have a cable connection, and none of us bothered to sit in front of it either.
Cutting to the present, you'd agree with me if I said that now, the same people that were obsessed with those zillion channels on TV simply prefer to scan their television sets with the remote, and within a matter of seconds, all 300 odd channels are surfed and the remote is thrown away on the couch. Clearly, nothing interesting is being telecast, or it's not worthwhile watching!
Cable operators can conveniently blame the radio stations for stealing their thunder. And why would'nt they? The last few months have seen at least 4 new FM radio stations in Chennai, (adding to the existing 5 stations) in their launch pads, trying to attract their listeners with big noises and celebrity guests, spoofs, promos et al.
Today, yet another radio station has been launched in Chennai, Radio One FM 94.3. They are proudly presenting their first 50 days on air with 50 celebrity interviews. And of course, all the discussions/views/events/current affairs/listener’s calling and singing/song requests/SMS contents/exciting prizes will follow. In no time, this will also become just another one of those other mundane radio stations.I reckon, the day is not far off when I might surfing those 10 odd radio stations in my music system at home and immediately throw the remote control away!
5 comments:
i already do that - browsing thru the radio n switching it off. imho, most of em play pretty lousy music most of the time (like new tamil film music - and almost every song sounds similar to some other song!). whats more i find the RJs absolutely annoying. not to mention the completely jobless members of the public who call them and talk about nothing. bah! i'm thinking i'l get a worldspace - atleast i can get genres of my choice. what say?
about TV channel browsing - am not sure if everybody does that(surfing and throwing the remote on the couch). i for one, don't have a TV, and so theres no question. but if i do go home, i go straight to the channels of my choice - which are animal planet, natgeo, travel n living (and ftv of course ;o)
but thats about me - talking about people in general, i am sure theres a huuuuuge fan following for 'chitti-chittappa-anni-akka' kind of serials, in just about all languages. atleast thats what the TRPs say.
ooops, sorry for the long rant :)
you should change your name to karuthu kannamma... :) you seem to have a opinion about everything in this world... topics that no one would even think about... thingies that we all take for granted...
Your blogging personality is true to you... creative, logical, confident and insightful...
Jai karuthu kannamma
Dharma,
No worries at all! In fact, I love long rants; the longer the rant, the better. :)
And yeah, I comptly agree with you on the lousy jobs the RJs do and the utterly jobless people that call them soo frequently. And yeah, worldspace is a lot lot better. I've beent trying to convince dad into getting that for a coupla years now :-/
About television, fortunately I still am not connected to the insane cable network :-D, so I really wouldnt know about the TRPs of those mundane serials ;)
CM,
Haha, I took for granted all the radio channels a year ago. But Radio One made it the 10th radio station in Chennai and I could contain it no more :-D
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