Devil's Advocate

Couch potatoes of the world!!! Unite!!!

Such should be the war-cry of all the lesser organisms of the world who have been shunned, branded lazy and what not by this cruel world which cannot see the happy faces of all the channel surfing men and women who wield the remote, decide the TRP ratings and thus the advertisement revenues of the television channel. But even after taking on this thankless and arduous task of spending numerous hours before the television screen, what do we get??? Nothing!!! Absolutely nothing.....

Oh wait, we do get something. We get betrayed by these television channels. Why am I so serious and making such a hue and cry at a time when there seems to be no terror attack or an under-construction bridge falling or China attacking? Well there is a reason.

Switch on your TV sets. Come on do it! Switch to any news or music or sports or movie channel. Do you see something wrong? Ah! I forgot. How could you with all those long hours before the idiot box affecting your otherwise hawkish view.

What I'm talking about is the encroachment of the viewing area with all those flashes, logos, tickers & advertisements rolling while a programme is still on.

• The news channels- well the anchor's pretty face is barely visible what with the screen being filled up from all sides.
• Sports channels- we now have a ticker running at the bottom of the screen with a big logo of the channel. Couple it with ads running in between bowls being bowled. And yes, the hunger for more ad-revenue sometimes eats up a bowl or two during a cricket match.
• Movie/ Music channels- they too suffer from this new bug called a ticker. Looks like it'll be a quintessential part of TV viewing now. Agreed when a film in wide screen format is being telecast, one can bear some. But something moving on your screen (other than the actors) while Captain Jack Sparrow fights off Davy Jones pisses me off big time.
• Family Channels- well if you have the courage to sit and watch all those saas-bahu shows (for which you'll be nominated for a Red & White Bravery award), you'll find that they too have been pervaded by the same malice.

The part in all this is that the content quality of channels is progressively going down. The number of ads being taken is progressively rising up. And we are actually paying to watch all the crap being doled out along with reduced screen area and ads.

What the duck!!!