I have no idea where that last year went...
Nevertheless, Happy New Year everybody! Wishing you all lots of love and happiness and success in the year...
Hope it’s your best year ever!

As I try to recap all that transpired in 2011, considering nearly half of all TV channels we have on air are News channels, all I recall is Anna Hazare dominating the airwaves. At the time of our going to press, he was about to commence his last fast of the year in Mumbai and the Government was preparing to discuss the passing of some version of a Lok Pal Bill in Parliament. I don’t know what’s going to come out of either plan but the way things have gone about this past year, I too am rooting for the genuine crusader of the genuine Aam Aadmi, i.e. Anna. Irrespective of whether one agrees or disagrees with his strategies & methods to get attention paid to this malaise at hand, I believe people are more sickened by corruption, corruption related problem and most of all the reluctance on the part of those in power to help eradicate corruption… So, may the force be with Anna.

Moving on to what all’s been happening in literal telly-land, yes there have been some shifts taking place here too… Judging by the performance of reality shows, their popularity & demand has been dwindling, resulting in the rolling of many heads in many TV Channels last year. The audiences no longer believe in the authenticity of these shows and as such are no longer interested in watching them. The shift has been back towards soaps, not the saas-bahu variety but more towards stories like Sathiya on Star Plus. People prefer stuff they can relate to and the reality shows today are coming across as too put on for anyone to believe them anymore. Let’s see if the trend continues in the new year.

And, finally, just an observation of how times have indeed changed… Where there was a time when one used to think of cinema as the “big screen” and

TV as the poor little cousin or idiot box when it came to entertainment. Today every big cinema star has moved to TV, some even during the prime of the film careers (like SRK, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar to name a few) – New film releases and box office hits boast of a crore persons having seen the film… when it comes to TV, a popular show is watched by approximately 40 crore people at a given times… there’s no point of any comparison. TV is definitely being looked at as the other “big screen” today and it’s all thanks to our ever-enterprising industry and the hard work they have put in over the past decade… Kudos to all! Oh yes, another reason we’re being viewed as such is because entertainment has now moved to another even smaller screen … our smart phones! The internet and entertainment software of the likes of Kolaveri Di are a medium we’re all going to have to reckon with… that song got almost 20 million hits within a few weeks of release…�

amazing isn’t it…?

And, on that happy note… I once again wish you a GR8! year ahead… See you same time, same place, next month… Until then, happy Reading!

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ANU RANJAN

anu@indiantelevisionacademy.com

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