Choices...are they an illusion!!

I was recently talking to a colleague of mine..and invariably most of my casual conversations somehow revert to movies..well i was discussing with him about the good old days when there was just the monotonous doordarshan and no other choices in terms of channels... now i know u must be wondering ..what do i mean by the GOOD old days..surely arent we better off with the vareity thats available to us...Most of the times i am pretty sure we are better of with the plethoras of channels that we have at our disposal for our viewing pleasure..but certain times i am a lil disillusioned by the choices...for example i remember we used to have in dd the weekly once english movie in dd metro..which me and my dad would religiously watch and i would end up somehow sleeping halfway through..but i loved them for what they were..the rare times when i founf myself privy to english it was a real thrill to watch english movies more like a coup that i pulled off :)..also there were these regional movies that used to be shown on sunday along with subtitles...It really used to be fun to see movies in so many different languages which i really dont get to see anymore.. Sometimes I feel that inspite of dd having just two channels were able to cater to viewing pleasures while at the same time not making the idiot box addictive..but then if u ask me do I watch doordarshan now at all...well u gotta be kidding doordarshan is for losers who dont have choices :)...i have felt the same kinda disconnect nowadays with radio as well..for example i really got hooked on to radio when i was in tenth..loved listening to fm air 107.1 especially the limited times when english songs were being played.. I remember that cyrus broacha did an amazing job in a program called 'chaar baje band baje'..u guessed it right it was at four in the evening :)..then later on when i was in chennai during my engg days i used to listen to 107.1 fm religiously between seven to nine..which is when english songs would be played but u know through those four years i could slowly see degradation of the quality of rjing..which increased with the plethora of private channels coming up... In fact now in mumbai I think there more than 4 private fm channels...and if u ask me none of that have manged to differentiate themselves through their sound (a bit like the himmesh reshamiya songs...cant recognize one from the other ) i mean if it wasnt for the constant jingles airred in the channelse reminding us what (as in which frequency/channel)we were listening to we would never know. I remember it was not the case be4 I distincty remember 92.5 fm airing only english which metamorphosed into a mix of hindi and english songs...but atleast the kinda songs that they aired had a distinct flavour to it making us instantly recognise the frequency to which we were tuned into even if the radio jingle did not comeup constantly..however now its not the case, its the same content in every radio channel in mumbai...maybe it was due to maket compulsions..but i still fail to see the point in not differentiating oneself from the competitor...i somehow felt that AIR with just a single fm channel had enuff vareity and managed to pack in all kinds of songs from hindustani to rock and from carnatic to old hindi classics the entire works throgh time slots...this leads me to the point behind this post which is that sometimes choices suck!!!

Cricket Coverage...Crazier by the Day

I still remember those insane days when I used to get up at the crack of dawn (well actually be4 that)to see the world cup unfold in australia. Boy how things have changed since then. India still has that special place for cricket its the king of all sports as far as India is concerned.I used to watch those prematch and post match analysis as if the analysis could just change the results of the game or at the very least help me interpret the game better as if the game was as much a puzzle as the Rubik's Cube (which i have never ever got to solving and to think some people do it blindfolded...really makes me feel miserable). Now I am not saying the analysis was earth shattering or something like that but at least it used to captivate one's mind (there is one more thing i seriously want to know does richie benaud never age..he has been channel 9's correspondent since well pretty much since the time i remmember watching cricket take place in australia..and the bugger looks the same!!!).
Nowadays things are totally diffent. You have a bimbo who well basically chooses to both reveal her skin and her ignorance about cricket, So much so that you are not sure whether to mute the televesion or laugh at the fact that cricket has been made a mockery. Now dont get me wrong of course i like oggling at the bimbo, surely thats what tips the ratings of the show up.. In fact i believe SEt max has quoted that it has radically changed the kind of audiance who tune into the game, it proclaims to have got the game closer to women!!(of all people I thought they would be the last to tune into cricket because of a revealing bimbo but well times have changed and the closets are being emptied :D) And to add to the bimbo you have somebody called Sidhu and his wonderful quotations. He is definitely talented and well uses every opportunity to display his talent with all those flowery quotations which will definitely put any English Man to shame but sometimes you just cant handle it.. I mean give me a break I have had enuff of these ridiculous quotations (maybe its partly due to the fact that I cant quote for nuts :)). To top it all we have some stupid tarrot card reader trying to predict who is gonna win...(and she doesnt stop at it she predicts everything from indian economy to the prospects of mandira bedi's next movie)..imagine how simple things would be if just on the basis of some bimbette taking out a card things could be predicted...but the tarrot card reader is very smart now. She doesnt commit to anything does she? She just hints at prospects of the game and states some chances of one team winning so that she can never be caught in the act of actually predicting what happens...real cheapster if u ask me and she is not even good to oggle at :)
So if u ask me as viewer what would i like to have...well i think a bit of mix of the old and the new i guess...i mean sidhu is adorable with his quotations if only he knew the meaning of the word limit. And by all means do have the bimbo..no harm ever came from oggling at the bimbo :) but lets just limit her contribution in the discussion :) and atleast cut the tarrot card reader..btw i believe u can definitely make cricket more insightful and entertaing by having the right kind of presenters...for example Geoffrey Boycott's commentary are both entertaining and insightful at the same time... But then all I can do as an individual is just use the remote when things become unbearable to hear :)


p.s.: I think that woman commentator is also aweful and we need to change her.. Maybe we should try some female like the way the channels found Harsha bhogle (somebody who would have hardly played cricket and at the same time can capture the audience completely)