Till grade ten I remember watching television very religiously. Greater part of the time was spent on watching sitcoms. Below are few sitcoms containing high recall proteins:
Marshal: A detective solving murder mysteries
Sabina: Saga of a magical woman
Mayamruga: One of the feathers in T N Seetharam’s large sized cap which was widely viewed and obsessed serial amongst elder generation would not be an understatement
Mahabharatha and Ramayana: A Sagar productions, who etched the image of Raama and Krsna as Raama and Krsna in our minds!
Shaktiman: The Superman for us Indians, Mukesh Khanna who spins like a top but in air at the speed of light. He was the only savior of all evil. The villain to me brought humor than what he was supposed to bring as a villain.
Duck Tales: A Walt Disney Production, very popular during that time amongst toddlers and even now I guess
Swat Cats: An animated series created by Christian and Yvon Tremblay and produced by Hanna-Barbera and Turner Program Services. I learned the adage ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ which was often used by The Deputy Mayor of Megakat City
Evenings during weekends were time for Hindi or Kannada movies which I habitually missed for better and energetic activity, playing cricket. In spite of giving deaf ears to directors and actors plead to watch their movies they still didn’t give up their hopes. Sanguine bunch of people I tell you!
In the "Facebook" of social networking sites, youtube, blogs and podcasts where does the ‘idiot box’ stand today? (You go back and reread)
Pardon, I meant ‘In the "world" of…..’
Who thinks television as an integral part of one’s life like before?
This augurs the obsession with T N Seetharam’s and Sagar Productions sitcoms has transcended to Facebook, myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, hi5 and more. Don’t muse, Orkut is defunct or something like that.
Despite the fact that there are myriad watchable, knowledgeable and enjoyable programmes aired it doesn’t interests us as much as Internet. Colossal load of information waiting to be viewed on the net divert the attention from television and leaving the ‘idiot box’ as NOT a source of entertainment or knowledge.
Television is no contender for Internet due to disadvantages, portability and speed.
Why would you wait for 9 ‘o’ clock news on television when you can read/hear/watch latest happenings around the world with a jiffy delay on your iPhone or Android phone from anywhere and everywhere in the world? Unlike before you get to choose what you want to read/hear/watch.
Here is a supporting article from Harvard Business Review which gives statistics and talks about the declining trend in television viewership especially amongst the younger generation in spite of diligent efforts from the media strategists and advertisers.
To conclude, unless there is shift in the way television is perceived there won’t be any surge in the number of television viewers but the plummeting trend will continue.
