The Idiocy of Indian Television Programmes

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Indian Television. Not really a global phenomenon is it? After all in India, prime time programmes are primarily meant for aunties and grannies. The youth of this country has almost forever been starved of good, quality youth oriented programmes. Unless of course you consider 'programmes' like Roadies (MTV) to be proper programmes for the youth. As the clock strikes 7 (pm of course) thousands of women (my mum included) dedicate all their attention to the television sets, for 'saas-bahu' (mother-in-law vs wife) rivalry, family dramas (epitomised family dramas with joint families the size of elephant packs), evil aunties and well, more evil aunties. And what do we guys watch? Well, there's always THE NEWS, although listening to the same crap being repeated 24x7 does not really make for a pleasant experience. Then there's always the talent hunt shows where every female singer, prodded by her over zealous parents, wants to become a Lata Mangeshkar and where every male singer prodded again by over zealous parents and dreamy eyed girlfriend(s?) to become the next Mohammad Rafi. And then there are the business news channels, but from what I gather and from my personal experience as well, this is not everyone's cup of tea. So what else can we watch? Oh yeah, the 'tech' shows which is about as techy as a supermodel showing off her iPhone, where real techy things like open source, source code, etc. are forbidden words, and where the review of the latest mobile phone depends largely on how good its looks are compared to the other device they 'reviewed' the other day. Thats tech for you on tele. Okay so what the hell do we watch or can we watch? Nothing to be honest. No Indianised versions of western tv series (just copy a few shows if you cant come up with original ideas! Please!), no true Indian world class programmes, not even a proper comedy show!

Of course you might think that expecting a Top Gear or a Lost here in India would be a tall order but frankly, considering the amount of money spent on those zoom-in zoom-out types all 365 days, I think its very much possible. Why cant we have a Lost here? Why not a House? Why not? Honestly why not? Why does the youth of this country have to turn to the US/UK series to satisfy their hunger for top class watchable programmes? Like a lot of things I dont understand (fail to fathom), the reason of this lack of proper good, quality stuff on Indian stuff is beyond my comprehension.