Breaking News

Breaking News: Amitab Bachan is down with cough and cold.
This is what our media and news channel has reached.

I still remember the days when 9 Pm used to be the time when we all would sit together to listen to the Doordarshan news. It used to be of 20 min. ok! 30 min including some small and fixed Washing Powder Nirma or those “Tumhare kapre mere kapro se jayada safed kaise?” types of ads. Then there was “The World This Week” which used to come on Saturdays (well may be Friday, don’t remember….. Well my educated readers you can pitch in with the correct day in case you remember.) This used to be a full 1 Hr show with most importance given to the international news. (Remember watching Gulf War) Prannoy Roy single handedly took this small one hr show to what NDTV is today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDTV). Then things changed. Cable TV was the order of the day. Suddenly there was a boom of news channels. News was on air 24X7. We were relieved as now dad could see the news any time. And we also didn’t miss out on our cartoon shows and mom could see her K type serials. But alas it was a short lived happiness. Soon Breaking news like the one shown above started to come.

Thinking of it now it was a time when we were new to so many options to watch. It was fun at times. You know dial chasing through the channels. New and improved ads, new serials, think of it as a boom of new ideas. But news channel then also used to show breaking news that really broke into the house. Remember 9/11, or Kargil war.

But lately it seems that the news channels are more, time not a factor and too less news. Or how else will you define the kind of Breaking News we get now a days. “Amitab Bachan came to receive his daughter in law” and then the question. “Why didn’t Abhishek come?” I say, the poor guys don’t even have privacy now. Some how, I have noticed that these reporters also came up with weird, irritating and some times funny questions too (well it’s funny to us when we think of it).

Here is another one, after Salman Khan was released from jail this sweet looking reporter comes to him and asks, “Now that you are out of the jail, how are you feeling?” Oh come on give me a break. Then there was the next question, “How are your parents feeling?”
This was the best one I think. Salman immediately pipes up saying, “My parents are devastated. They are really sad and trying to convince the authority that I should be put back to jail.”
Recently the TV news channels have also started showing full serials (Indian idol types). Soon we will be getting Breaking News like

Breaking News: The maid didn’t come to Ms. Chaddas home. She has logged an FIR for the mental trauma given to her on the unfaithful day.

Breaking News: Mr. Chopra’s head was broken by a flower, thrown along with the vase.

Breaking News: Another post by Abhinav was posted on Breaking News to make fun of us and the readership has increased as a result of this.