We want more documentary evidence of the state of the State not endless discussions with the same set of analysts: Begone Delhi’s intellectual properties, we need to pick more grey cells outside the capital’s brain trust. Is there no Pakistan expert outside Delhi’s IFS apartments?

Let’s break away from Breaking News Just In and Exclusive. Meaningless. Calm down, be reflective, unruffled even by momentous events. Sift through the chaos and bring a sense of logic and linearity so viewers understand what is happening and why. Remember, you’re in the newsroom, not the panic room.

The problem for entertainment is generic rather than particular. The daily soap has no idea how to break free of the K stranglehold. In 2000, when Kyunki, Kahani and Kasauti went on air with the Hindu undivided family, the K serial built its popularity on the core foundation of Indian cultural coding, ergo, Mahabharata, Ramayana... This was very different from the serials of the nineties — Saans was about marriage, infidelity, Zee’s Amanat about a widower and his daughters.

Since 2000, urban India has changed. It’s younger and young people don’t care about the joint family of the K serials. They’re part of nuclear two income families, with small or teenage children coping with urban minefields; they have an agenda that is apposite to those of our saas-bahus whose primary concern remains, yes, marriage. The days of K serials if not over, are numbered. Start counting.

TV entertainment channels do not cater to the me-gen-Next which is already diverted by other recreational activities — from sms to computers and internet, from DVDs, to ipods and of course, the mall crawl. The four or five day daily 23-minute soap fix has two handicaps for such an audience: soaps demand a faithful following which most viewers don’t have time for. They are repetitive, monotonous and offer little variety to an audience that is thirsting for new experiences.

... contd.