The ABC of BBC-inspired stuff
Amita Malik

ONE has lost count of how many foreign radio and TV channels beam to India and in how many foreign and Indian languages. But out of them all, the BBC has kept a steady foot in India from as far back as one can remember, certainly on radio and now on TV. It has a dedicated and faithful audience in all languages and for very good reasons its English and Indian language broadcasts from London keep British interests in mind, not entirely because the only subsidy the BBC receives from the British government is towards its external broadcasts. It retains its legendary professional independence and integrity mostly because it derives its revenues from listeners and viewers themselves in the way of licence fees. Where it has shown its maturity in telecasts to India in its World Service is the intelligence with which it has included Indian talent in its production and presentation and kept up a judicious Indo-British balance in its content as well. So Karan Thapar for Face to Face, Siddharta Basu for Mastermind India and Prannoy Roy or someone else from NDTV for Question Time India keep Indian interest alive although all these programmes are based on their BBC originals, but skillfully adapted to India. And the anchors all sound like highly educated English-speaking Indians who are not willing to put on false British accents to oblige anyone.

And now comes another BBC-inspired programme, one of its longest running ones (42 years), in the form of University Challenge. This is another quiz programme, a general knowledge quiz, to be anchored by Siddharta Basu. And it will pitch the cream of British university students against the cream of Indian unversities and institutions. For instance, the special episode with final year Indian teams vs UK teams will feature Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai; R V College of Engineering, Bangalore; Jadavpur University, Kolkata; and S P College of Engineering, Mumbai; against University of Edinbburgh, Queen’s University Belfast, Bribeck University of London and Aberystwyh University of Wales. There will be 32 episodes. They will be telecast on BBC World on Thursdays at 10 pm starting August 7. There will be 12 preliminary rounds, eight quarter finals, four quarter finals, two semi-finals and one final, with 28 teams competing, this time with non-final year students.

A semi-serious preview of the programme was held last week by the BBC and the British Council jointly where four young celebrities, together with two students from the British and Indian universities, treated a very large and distinguished audience to the shape of things to come. In one team were Sharon (Evita) Prabhakar and Cyrus Broacha of Bakra fame, and on the other side were Mandira Bedi of noodle straps fame and Rahul Bose (Mr Iyer) with a broken nose and very much in plaster —as a result of playing rugby . It was all pure fun rounded off with a scintillating performance on multiple drums by Shivamani. But it certainly gave one an idea of the programme, which promises to be a big draw, particularly for students and young people generally.

And talking of young people, it has always been said that it takes two to tango. But in a new programme called Tango on Star Plus it seems to take at least four to tango. I saw the programme because I have high regard for its producer, Shibani Sharma-Khanna who used to produced NDTV Breakfast Show with great elan. Sunday’s Tango is more of a fun than the health programme it claims to be on other days. Not being an early riser, I could not bring myself to view it on weekdays at 7 am, so I caught up with it on Saturday afternoon. I am not in the age group to which it is directed, meaning 20-plus. I found it very noisy with the well-coached audience making more noise than anyone else. It had everything, from dressing models in toilet paper to a tug-of-war, which the screaming audience seemed to lap up. I shall have to watch the weekday programmes to watch the health part of it, as it is not fair judging it only by its Sunday frolic.

I would like to end with a big salute to cameraperson Ajmal Jami, of NDTV, who was in the helicopter which crashed with Vijay Mallaya and Sanjay Khan on board. With remarkable devotion to duty and professional courage of the highest order, Jami kept on shooting with his camera while the helicopter was crashing and right until it hit the ground and broke into four pieces. His rare footage was shown the next day and one’s hair stood on end while watching it. In their eagerness to highlight the providential escape of the VIPs, most of the media forgot to mention Jami, who was the only one who had a bad injury of a fractured arm and a blow on the head. Fortunately, Jami is now on the way to recovery. Shabash, Jami, we your colleagues are very proud of you and wish you a happy, trouble-free personal and professional life.