Writing on the Mirror

Breaking News : Aishwarya Rai visits temple with the Bacchan family

Join the live debate on TV : Is Aishwarya Rai being a Manglik going to hinder Abhishek’s career ? Send in your sms to ……

Exclusive footage : AIshwarya doing the Karvachauth puja

Flash news/ Sneak preview/ Exclusive coverage ………….The story doesnt end….

Well, the Aishwarya - Abhishek drama atleast had some star value ( for whatever its worth ), but these days we always seem to have ” Breaking News / Flash News” which says that ” the contestant from this region may be ahead in the sms poll to win Reality show No 10 ” or ” Bombay is getting hotter by the day” or something equally mindless…………..

Really…it takes a lot of patience to wade through this tiring junk which is being pushed down our throats and find genuine news, which deserves coverage and some analyses, and leads to discussions and debates. All the relevant news is being eschewed away for sensationalised region-based manipulated pieces of irrelevant information dressed in the garb of news.

Some of the factors why I think Indian news channels have degraded are :

There is a lot of money to be made in the Indian Media industry which is booming. So the opportunity with huge ad revenues and competition against General entertainment channels, has put a lot of pressure on the news channel to also keep track of their TRPs. But problem is when ONLY TRPs MATTER. I think thats where we are heading. That leads to a lot of junk getting classified as NEWS.
Dearth of talent. Dearth of talent like a Barkha Dutt or Prannoy Roy. Dearth of a good education system to support and nurture these talents. This affects quality of delivery hugely.
The need to stress on quality over quantity.
And give more credit to the audience. We are discerning. We really are not interested in the private lives of celebrity couples and neither are we obsessed with who is going to be the next super star / indian idol/ whatever…..We are more worried about the Food crisis and global warming, and its impact on our lives and the future of this planet, what is really happening in our economy in the face of a US recession…Regional, and international issues which impact us as a nation, and as an individual.

Our News channels have let us down, and am not sure whether a comparison with their International counterparts is what is lacking. It really boils down to ethical news reporting and not denigrating themselves into only TRP hungry media.

blogathonindia, blogathonindia1

Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour. William Cowper

Is Bollywood overshadowing the regional cinema…thats what many of us are pondering over at the Blogathon.

The 2008 FICCI - PWC study on Entertainment & Media estimates the entire film industry at $96 billion in 2007, at a growth rate of 14%. ( Read full report here ). The change is palpable. Not only in terms of revenue, but in the variety of revenue streams, the way “Film Marketing” has emerged as the next big thing, how films get launched internationally, and of course, with the corporatization and phenomenal growth in multiplexes, its no wonder that there are multi-crore multi-film deals with all major ( and many minor) stars as well.

Yes, and the lines are quite blurring between the silos of ‘bollywood’ movies and “regional” movies to a large extent. Take the case of Priyadarshan ( director of Malayalam movies ), where he has turned his successful 10 year old Malayalam movies into Hindi flicks which seemed to have revived the genre of comedy ! Then there are the remakes like Ghajini, which seem to get bigger and better when brought to Bollywood. Take the case of Hindi actors doing Bhojpuri movies. So, in practical terms, I doubt it whether the film industry as such is too worried about exchange of talent and ideas within their regional paradigms.

However, the question still remains whether Bollywood overshadows regional movies ? This may have been a glaring fact atleast a decade back. But the past 4-5 years, I think has shrunk the differences. Regional movie stars are as much recognised as the superstars of Bollywood. Regional movies are also getting bigger and better, what with Rajnikanth’s Sultan taking the cake away. Maybe where the regional movies still lag behind, is the international launch and fan-following that the UK & US audience have for Bollywood movies. But I suspect, this is more due to the fact that the regional producers may not be bringing their movies to the international audiences, rather than an apathy from the film-viewers abroad.

The future, I think will equate any more differences between the regional movie genre and bollywood, simply because the number of corporates entering the business would see business sense in catering to the regional tastes and of course, would want to cash in on the pot of money waiting for them there