Monday, February 23, 2009

Seven second delay

While watching the oscars this morning, I kept reminding myself that there is just about seven second delay between the actual event and the transmission to the whole world. It does not look that way at all. The performances, lighting, live music and the presentation was perfect.
Compare this to any award function in India and you can only feel bad. National awards are too formal and boring. Filmfare/Stardust/Screen awards are shoddy in production value and are not even telecast the same day. It take almost week to edit and telecast. IMHO producers of such functions in India lack basic औकात (au-kaat).

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Two political parties, one voice

Nope, this does not mean that the parties necessarily agree with each other. In fact, these two political parties could not have more divergent views on any topic. I am talking about the political advertisements on the telly.
One of the ads is by Behenji Mayavati (मेरे पास उनका साथ है) and other by Government of India, i.e. the Congress (Sonia). The voice in both the advertisements is same - belonging to Kailash Kher. Pretty cool for him since the grass is green on both sides of the fence :-)

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Greenathon BS

A leading news channel in India - NDTV is indulging in an exercise called Greenathon to supposedly increase awareness about green technology among its viewers. It is a 24 hour long telecast, being called a first in the television history. Indeed it is and IMHO is the biggest bullshit any TV channel has ever produced in the name of environment, awareness, humanity and what not.
I would like to ask the owners of NDTV:
  1. How much money did you spend in brainstorming about this program? The money is directly proportional to the amount of night oil burnt.
  2. How much money is being paid to the anchors, artists and celebrities performing on this show? Because if it is in name of awareness, I do expect them to perform for free. Otherwise, they are going to take this money, spend it and add to carbon emissions.
  3. You gave ads in newspapers, right? How much money/ink/paper/trees could have been saved otherwise?
  4. The set looks phenomenal. How much did you spend on lighting and sound? Please remember each paisa saved on these items will add to saving carbon emissions.
  5. What about post production e.g. editing the program? How many computers were used to add special effects? Could you have done with switching few off?

It was funny to see:

  1. Toyota is one of the advertisers. I know of Toyota as one of the companies that makes cars. Cars burn petroleum products.
  2. A senior person from Nokia was on the show asking people to recycle old phones. He should have rather asked everyone to keep using the old phones and buy less of the newer models that Nokia keeps bringing out. Now that would be committing suicide, isn't it?

It is sad that no one seems to understand that this problem is worsened because of consumption beyond what we really need. We ought to pledge for environment by doing one thing we all can - LOWER OUR STANDARD OF LIVING. And that includes watching less television; especially channels like NDTV.