Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Infotainment or info-staninment?- Part 1

           All of you know that INFOTAINMENT is a combination word which was a product of the modern media flooded world. INFORMATION + ENTERTAINMENT = INFOTAINMENT

            As a child, the only news I used to hear were on DD and AIR. And truthfully, they were quite decent. And the only news I used to read were from std newspapers. But even with those news papers, when I had a feeling that I was reading the wrong newspaper, (which my grandma preferred) I went and told the paper distributor myself to put the one which I liked and thankfully, it is still the one we read. I won't digress from the topic. Let me put it straight. Isn't/hasn't  this infotainment business becoming/become a platform for live and widespread gossiping? Live because there are always live discussions and widespread beacuse satellites take them everywhere.

             During our childhood we were all taught that gossiping is bad. In my personal opinion media were a bit more decent a decade ago. Actually I can write a funny story about the origin of INFOTAINMENT. This is as follows :

             "Not so long ago, but long enough ago, there were mega and giga serials in all the channels and they used to make all the women population all over this country cry form 19.00 hrs to 23.00 hrs from Monday to Friday.But somehow that wave subsided, I don't know if it was because, the idea of a suffering woman became unacceptable or because all the mother in laws decided to become amicable towards their daughter in laws or something, the serials just lost their strong hold over the hearts of the female population. Both women and the channels had obtained a bad name by that time. Women, for being addicted to sop serials, and channels, for making the women lazy. I suspect that a gang of hungry husbands, who were deprived of food and sports channels, might have conspired against these mega serials and would have written some blackmail notes to the channel heads to change the scenario and reverse the status of their wives as mere food cooking machines.
 
           Anyway, the tide of sop serials was over and the channels had to telecast something. Come on, they have to earn a living. Don't they have to? All stories had gone, because serials with similar stories were on almost all channels. They had to show something new. And where do you get something new everyday? In between came the era of reality shows. I don't know what reality do they show? Be it a dance show or music show, in which you can vote (do I have to go into all that business right now? I guess all of you know about this, because all of us, including me has voted at least once for our favorite contestant in any of those programs.) most of the times it does the purpose of a sop serial. Needless to say, there are many many reality music programs which have led to many things, both in entertainment world and real world. But still, these programs have a limit. They should be in a particular format and you can telecast it only for a fixed period. Where can you get the material for  infinite entertainment?

         Somebody had a brain wave after intense thinking (see they had to think very intensely because of the intellectual dumbness caused by watching and telecasting giga/tera serials under the name of mega serials). Somebody said, "Let news channels be." And thus started the era; of INFOTAINMENT!

                
      

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