SIGHT & SOUND
It’s raining awards
Amita Malik

THERE are now so many awards for television that they almost outnumber the film awards. Every week, some channel or the other announces that it is going to cover some TV awards ceremony. And, when one tunes in one sometimes finds the most extraordinary people and unlikely channels going off with top awards.

The awards given in India are always described as the best in India, although the competition, if any, has been between only Hindi channels. Channels in other major languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Bengali are completely ignored.

Unfortunately, cynical viewers have ceased to take some of the awards seriously, and more so because the same anchors or channels get them year after year. This is a pity because Indian channels, programmes and performers of the highest quality, sometimes of international standards, are left standing while the year-after-year winners gloat over their awards and flaunt them as if they are really national awards.

However, some international awards still command great prestige and honour. One of them is the ABU award, the initials stand for the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union, to which belong Doordarshan and many other official international channels. The awards tend to be more restricted and official but are highly prized. Doordarshan has won many of them down the years, and I specially remember the ABU award for Sai Paranjpye, then on the staff of Doordarshan. It was for a programme called The Little Tea Shop and my husband, who was on the jury which met in Tehran, told me how charmed the entire jury was by this charming vignette on this typical Indian institution, the chai ki dukan. Sai later became a very fine film director.

I am also impressed when people, whom I know to be meritorious, win national awards, such as Dibang of NDTV India. He won the best news anchor award that I mentioned in last week’s column. Also, I am impressed when awards, which have the media as only one category, go to some young person. Last week, the Sanskriti Awards, which are given to achievers under the age of 35, gave the journalism award to Radhika Bordia, whose programmes India Matters and 24 Hours I have often praised in this column. Other winners were from the fields of music, painting and social work.

However, it international awards rained on Indians last week, making us proud. Karan Thapar won, for the third time, the best anchor award for his interview with Arun Jaitley in his hard-hitting programme Hard Talk India in the BBC series. This was an Asian TV award, given away in Singapore.

The top Asian TV awards also went to NDTV, for the best cable and satellite channel and the best news feature on tsunami. NDTV was also the runner-up with its programme on the floods in Bihar and the earthquake in Pakistan. All this just goes to show that Indian TV is alive and well and can compete with the best in the world. And we can well be proud of the award winners.

The week was hounded by three huge stories. There was Amitabh Bachchan’s illness. Shame on the TV reporter who smuggled herself into the ICU to get a story —highly unprofessional behaviour which cannot be forgiven. Then, Uma Bharati’s tantrums. Not to forget the high drama around Natwar Singh and his son. TV thrives on the dramatic and melodramatic and, as the saying goes, bad news is news, good news is not. The other lesser drama was the cricket match curtailed in Chennai by seasonal downpours and the accompanying media speculation about Sourav Ganguly, which must have left the poor man under terrible stress. The furore over Jagmohan Dalmiya and Sharad Pawar added to the masala. Everyone, including the media, seems to have forgotten, that cricket is, or was once, a pleasurable sport and not a political joust between people who have nothing to do with cricket. A great pity.