SIGHT & SOUND
DD anchors in stone age
Amita Malik

THERE has been for years — and probably still is — an AIR Staff Training School. I know, because I got so tired of lecturing year after year on the art of interviewing that I finally asked them to record it and play it back when required. But I have never heard of a staff training school for Doordarshan, which is why it has always been so much less professional than All India Radio. I realised this as I listened, appalled, to DD’s sports commentators at the Asian Games and I cannot cite a worse instance than its commentators, both Hindi and English, on tennis.

Their first upsetting trait is that they keep on talking non-stop. Now this is understandable on radio, where they have to describe everything shot by shot and the voice of the commentator literally becomes the eyes of the listener. But not on TV. There the viewer can see everything and also hear everything. Yet DD’s commentators went on relentlessly to such an extent that it distracted the viewer who could see everything for himself.

Not only that, the Hindi and English commentators, after describing every shot in detail, went on to tell you what the player should have done. To give an instance of the trite details being mentioned, and this time it was the Hindi commentator, he said: "Deuce. Aap board par dekh lijiye. Deuce ka matlab chaaliss, chaaliss." If he knew we could see the board, he probably thought we were deaf and could not hear the umpire call out the score. Why did he have to tell us the score and also treat viewers like babes in the wood and tell them the meaning of deuce?

It will be recalled that the best sports commentators, including those on AIR and DD, have been former players, like Naresh Kumar. He only commented when required. Then there is our admirable Vijay Amritraj. The other most admired tennis commentators are people like John McEnroe, who has his unique style. They treat viewers like adults, who must know at least a little about tennis to be interested in the game. And their occasional analyses are expert ones which genuinely help the viewer to understand the game.

Even if DD does not have a staff training school, I would seriously suggest that they invite expert commentators from the international circuit to come out to India and train DD’s sports commentators, who are all too obviously leftovers from All India Radio and have no clue as to how to cover sports for TV, which is quite different. Vijay Amritraj is often in India and could be roped in for a start.

It has been an amazing week for the media. First our famous victory in South Africa, which included the spectacular return of Sourav Ganguly, the rise to the very top by Sreesanth, and the return of both Very Very Special Laxman and Zaheer Khan. It will be noted that all had at some stage been discarded by the selectors. And one wonders what would have happened if Sourav had not made that lone stand in the first innings of the first Test. The Indian batsmen top order was going through its familiar collapse until Sourav showed the way.

Then the long-delayed justice in the Jessica Lal case. But I did think that it was wrong of Anasuya Rai, who is one of our best TV reporters, to follow Jessica’s sisters to the graveyard and pester them with questions even after they had answered the first few and had then politely said the family wanted to be left alone near Jessica’s grave and that it was a private occasion.

There is a limit to exclusives, and the way Anasuya went on and on certainly brought her down in our estimation. A great pity. And incidentally, Jyotsna Mohan, who has been trying hard to speak firmly and not mumble or whisper, reverted to form when on Monday she was giving us the news about India’s cricket victory and Manu Sharma’s adverse verdict. At times her whispers became so intimate that one could not make out what she was saying.