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Channelsurfer
There is something in criminal happenings that keep the viewers, or at least the broadcasters, ensorcelled. Almost every TV channel worth its salt has a special slot for crime reporting or crime-based entertainers. Zee TV’s Crime Reporter, for instance, dwells upon the unsavoury details of a crime as would an accomplished gossip. Nothing is missed and nothing is held back from the viewers. The decibel levels are kept so high that you just can’t help sharing the contents with your neighbours, unless you change the channel or switch off the television.
Sony Entertainment TV has a slew of crime-based shows. The long-running CID is, of course, a favourite. Realistic crime scenarios are seamlessly meshed with some scientific investigation, sentimentalism, jingoism and Bollywood style derring-do to keep the viewers enthralled. Then there is Adalat on the same channel, wherein K. D. Pathak is the defence attorney a la Perry Mason (sans Della Street, the latter’s sexy secretary), who manages to keep the viewers enthralled, while he serves the criminal his/her just desserts. However, the non-fiction Crime Patrol — Dastak culls real life cases from police and court records and dramatises it for the benefit of viewers. Although the police do not always succeed in rescuing/protecting an intended victim, they do manage to apprehend the culprits and get them punished in the court of law. Whatever be this show’s worth as a social messenger of sorts, it is doing its bit, albeit unintentionally, to show police in a better light. Broken noses are not the stuff for media headlines. Unless such nose belongs to a VIP, or the fist that shattered it belonged to a celebrity. We do not know whether the South Africa-based NRI businessman — the one with the stricken nose — falls in the VIP category but we do know that Bollywood actors are celebrity, and Saif Ali Khan — who rendered the NRI nose incapacitated, however temporarily — is a star celebrity for more reasons than one. So, it was natural that our news TV — both Hindi and English — swept aside the fate of Falak, put the India-Italy diplomatic standoff on the murder of Indian fishermen on the backburner and even pushed the UP election coverage a couple of notches down the headline pecking order to enlighten us of the circumstances under which the Chota Nawab went berserk — as any gentleman would in his place, or so he claimed on TV later on — and gave the NRI and his father-in-law a demo of the Bollywoodian fist of fury, with some help from his couple of friends; the male ones. Ladies from Bollywood do not indulge in violence off camera, at least not yet. So, Headlines Today and News X dwelt upon the incident’s details threadbare, even as other channels were still showing it as breaking news on their masts and/or ticker-tapes. When asked for his reaction to the Saif-NRI bust-up by a TV reporter, a Mumbaikar put things in perspective, "Who the hell is Saif Ali?" Quite.
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