Smut - coming soon to a TV screen near you

TV news channels, especially Hindi, seem to have become electronic versions of Mayapuri and Manohar Kahaniyaan.

Tune in to any news channel, and chances are you will see aliens making surreptitious landings, prostitution rings, haunted places, aghoris dancing half nude in cemeteries, astrology, or a mad dog terrorising a neighbourhood. There was this one time when the channel, which by its own admission delivers news the quickest, showed a 2-min clipping of two serpents having intercourse. Going by the anchor’s fever pitched voice, it was news to him that snakes are born out of physical enterprise and not produced on trees. ‘Dekho, kaise lipat rahe hain ek doosre se’ (Watch, how they are embracing each other), read his script.

Quite clearly, either there is a lack of serious news to fill in 24 hours of airtime or the newsmen have lost their bearings and the understanding of what constitutes ‘news’. It might also be a marketing strategy to appeal to the lowest common denominator of audiences, grab eyeballs and subsequently ad revenue. For a few channels, it does seem to be working. India TV seems to lead the pack, and purportedly enjoys an 18 percent market share. Audiences in the cow belt and in the hinterland do not really distinguish—or are bothered about differentiating—between hard-nosed news, fiction or pure bunkum. Surprisingly, viewers in metros, belonging to SEC A and B class homes, regularly tune in to these programmes.

The government’s programming guidelines clearly prohibit channels from promoting superstition and sleaze. But channels brazenly flout this rule. There are stories abound of self-styled babas curing possessed villagers by thrashing them when they are not caught in romps with starlets; babies being thrown from rooftops to ward off evil, titillating MMS’ involving teenagers in hormonal overdrive, gigolos selling their wares on Delhi’s streets, fisticuffs between step wives… everything seems to be ‘Breaking News’.

Clearly, sleaze, slander and smut have become the name of the game. And viewers seem to be lapping it up. No wonder, our leaders continue to screw the country’s future, while its citizens are busy watching smut.