Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Lunch time talk

During lunch time my friends and I normally discuss about something or the other to kill time. The topics of discussion range from Sports to Politics. We discuss about Tendulkar as well as Sharukh Khan. Sometimes even controversial topics from the happenings in the current Indian politics. Couple of days back we were just sitting at the table talking about the comics we used to read when we were kids and suddenly the topic changed to the cartoons we used to watch. Everyone remembered the spiderman, He-Man and the other cartoons which used to come on DD at that time.

When we were growing up we just had one channel on television and had no options but come to think of it that was not a bad thing. We were wondering as to how the quality of programs in television has changed in the last 15 years or so. Even though the options for us as kids was very less the quality of entertainment was actually much better then what we have right now. The content and the variety of programs on DD was actually much better than the “Mega” serials we see on all TV channels these days. Those days not having too many options made sure that kids went outside to play more often than what we see from kids in this generation.

These days the programs on television is mostly based on movies. Every channel will have same type of programs which will be like Movie Reviews, Song Countdowns, Movie Countdowns, Star interviews and inbetween those lots of ads. While these programs are entertaining it doesnt stop us from flipping channels at regular intervals. There are not too many programs these days which are different and unique and which does not touch upon cinema. Things were different 15-20 years back, we had lots of quality entertainment of DD those days. Even though all of us cursed DD for their constant interruptions and their sometimes annoying coverage of sports and stuff, they did have some great content.

Nobody can forget the classics such as “Vikram Aur Betaal”, “Fauji”, “Byomkesh Bakshi”, “Malgudi Days”, “Nukkad” etc. DD was great for kids too with cartoons such as Spiderman, He-Man, Shazzam, Junglebook and also some serials such as Indradanush which as a kid I used to love to watch. The variety was great I have missed out so many other great DD seriels and programs which we used to enjoy watching those days with less ad breaks. Television used to be true family entertainment. Parents never had to worry too much regarding inappropriate content if watching with kids. These days parents are always at high alert making sure that they change the channels at the right moment mostly to some sports or discovery or to some news channel.

Well even though I used to hate Door Darshan at that time, when we look back the best TV viewing experiance was only when we just had one channel. Anyways thats my opinion as I cannot stand the nonsense dished out these days on television in form of entertainment. Well DD might have taken a backseat these days with the advent of cable networks in India but in terms of quality of content they were way ahead


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