Family soaps seldom go out of fashion as these are assured of a committed audience and, hence, respectable TRPs. However, of late, the soap scene on Punjabi channels has been rather dismal. But a revival of sorts seems to be in the offing. Naseehat, which tackles assorted social evils, is coming soon on DD Punjabi. With Sandeep Chugh, Meher Mittal, Sameep Kang and Saroop Parind (Atro of the Atro-Chatro fame) starring, one can expect wholesome entertainment on the small screen.

Last fortnight I’d lamented the lack of original ideas for gameshows. Well there’s an exception, albeit for one time only. Next Adventure Sports on MH1 took viewers for a bit of Tarzan Swing, Burma Bridge, Spider Web and Monkey Crawl that reminded one of the SSB drill for the armed forces. Moreover, there were other sports like dirt track motorbike racing and bungee jumping, yes Bungee Jumping, all the way from New Zealand to the heart of Delhi. Only, here a mechanical contraption substituted for the real thing. Another disappointment was that none of the sports was demonstrated live.

While watching talk shows, especially the phone-in types, one begins to marvel at the way anchors greet. ‘Hi’ is ok and ‘hello’ is certainly the accepted form of salutation, but hell-yoh, hellew, hawloo, hall-yooo, hellyow etc make you wonder whether there’s any logic in such desperate attempts at inventing such wacky ‘n’ weird sound bytes. Form is important, but content vital. Right?