Three rules of the TV game

Let’s play rules. The first rule of the game: no news report is breaking news if it has already been broken to bits on other news channels.

Let’s play rules. The first rule of the game: no news report is breaking news if it has already been broken to bits on other news channels. If it has, then it can only appear as a scroll item until the clock strikes the hour and then it’s headline news — not breaking. This would avoid us having to see Dr Amit Kidney Kumar as identical sextuplets across channels with as many sets of ghoulish grinning teeth. Second rule: no report should be repeated more than once every 20 minutes and all news channels should repeat it in unison so as to avoid compulsive channel switchers encountering Saif Ali Khan everywhere telling us that he was not, repeat not, repeat not, married to Kareena Kapoor. Third rule: all newsbites should be replayed to the news biters so that they can confirm they said what we heard them say and not pretend that the media ‘misrepresented’ them. This would avoid Raj Thackeray’s unrighteous self-indignation and his heartbreaking (ha, ha) boycott of English and Hindi news channels.

If these three rules were followed, even occasionally, news TV would not be the root of all trouble with an evil genius for converting every non-event like the non-engagement of Saif and Kareena into the biggest news story of the day or making Thackeray into a Maratha warrior when he is simply the nephew of Bal Thackeray.

Aaj Tak/Headlines Today had a sting operation without any BB — Bollywood Bite. Jackie Shroff: “I played carom with Dawood” (but only as children); producer Sudhakar Bokade: “Dawood was totally smuggler” (?); Monica Bedi was there and so was Aditya Panscholi who said that on the sets of the film Yes Boss, SRK leapt out of his cabin , screaming: “Shoot me! Shoot me!” No, not to the cameraman but Dawood who had apparently threatened to do just that. Dawood is Aaj Tak’s magnificent obsession but this story was neither magnificent nor obsessive compulsive watching.

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Star News’ obsession was a 7 foot 3 inch 420 pound gentleman who goes by the name of Great Khali, or ‘Chemical Khali’. No, he’s not an Iraqi weapon of mass destruction but an Indian WWE wrestler who bounded into the ring and threw everyone else out. Until they came at him with the Undertaker, cupboards and tables, knocked him to the floor so bad, he’s seriously injured. Every evening, last week, Star News ran footage of his exploits and then brought us prime time breaking news that the reason for the great fall from his tremendous height was that he possessed weak legs. Visual of his legs that looked as sturdy as the rock of Gibraltar. Is this Star News of Star Movies?

Zee News, meanwhile, is obsessed with the Ramayana. This obsession has taken it to Sri Lanka and now Bali in Indonesia, where its reporter found a ‘one thousand year old moorthi’ with the help of, now wait for this, monkeys. What do you say, Andrew Symonds?

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com