Indian TV

I remember when I was a kid, the biggest benefit of being sick is that you got to have that tiny TV from the kitchen put in your room and were able to watch the Price is Right from the comfort of you bed.  No matter how bad the illness was, watching TV on a 4 inch black & white screen made it all better. Here, Indian TV is almost as painful as the disease itself. 

We have satellite TV and amongst our 335 channels, we get many Western or pseudo-western channels.  I say pseudo-western, because they are not TNT, FOX or NBC explicitly, but are stations that buy the programs from these cable channels and run them. This is all good on paper, but the issue is that all the programming and timing is controlled locally by the satellite TV providers which are the same geniuses that provide the Internet.  Worst yet, even if they get a good show, the content is controlled by the government censors.

Yes, the censors.  Everything that the hypocritical Hindu culture finds offensive - swearing, sex, references to swearing and sex, things that are not swearing and sex, but could be construed in the outer reaches of insanity as related to swearing or sex - are bleeped or simply removed. I was watching “Two and a Half Men” the other day and they actually bleeped the phrase “That sucks!” Then there is the violence.  Any violence of any kind is completely removed.  I was watching Beverly Hills Cop and when anyone got shot or punched, it was removed. For the love of God, I saw that movie when it came out in the 80s with my Grandmother Dorothy and she loved it. How graphic could it be?  

Next is the programming. Like all things Indian, the programming is done haphazardly and typically does not follow any logic in the way that it is done.  For instance, they recently decided to run season 1 of Modern Family.  Good choice.  They ran a new episode every night for 2 months straight and when they had exhausted the episode, they reran them … every night … for 6 months.  How about spacing it out and giving us something to look forward to each week.  They also advertise shows and then never run them.  A few months ago, they ran ads for a new season of NCIS, gave a day and a time and then forgot to run it.  Even when they do get it right, though, you wish they hadn’t as every time slot is more full of ads than show.

Advertisements are a huge issue when watching TV in India for both frequency and content.  When watching a movie, even on HBO, there are 8 minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of show.  This is an outrageous ratio.  You can actually go the bathroom while fast-forwarding through ads on DVR’d shows.  On normal TV shows, they run 5 minutes of ads every 10 minutes.  The best part is that in each of the aforementioned time slots, they only actually run about 5 different ads, but they repeat them over and over again for the entire 5 to 8 minutes only to take the last minute to recap all the ads in a “presented by” statement. Remember back in the 50s and 60s, when the announcer would come on at the beginning of the show and announce that Hee Haw was “brought to you by Kellogg’s Corn Flakes?” Same thing, except here it is done in an overly deep Indian voice trying desperately to sound American.  It borders on the insane!

As frustrating as the frequency is, he content of the ads is enough to drive you to drink.  The ads in India are so poorly thought through, that when we see a new ad, we have a running contest to figure out what they are selling. Sometimes, neither of us can guess it.  The basic premise of all Indian ads is to showcase a Bollywood actor or actress in situations that simply do not exist in India regardless if the context actually supports the product.

An Example:

(Click on the links below to watch.  
After watching, click on the back arrow to return to blog)  

Titan

In this ad, the charming Aamir Khan picks up a woman in a bar and they dance.  Firstly, in a country of arrange marriage, this just does not happen. In most clubs in India, men dance with men and women cower in the corner.  Secondly, what does that have to do with a watch?

Another example

Coke

Coke is an advertising giant and this was the best submission from all the Indian Advertising firms? Really?  I have seen more creativity from dolphins at Sea World.  

And this one!

Tata Manza

OK, first of all, if the tag line of "A Class Apart" means that no other car could be this poorly designed, than I am with the creators.  Secondly, they just make up stuff like "Digital Intelligence."  What the heck is that?  I surmise, it is a radio with a digital tuner.  Imagine seeing this ad in a loop 4 times for 8 minutes and every 10 minutes for three hours.  Give me a bottle and a gun!

USHA

Finally, there is this one.  Can someone tell me what the hell a guy dancing through the streets with a samosa has to do with a fan.  Yes, in case you did not catch it, it was a commercial for a fan.  

Unfortunately, I could not find any of the truly annoying ads, as it seems Garnier Skin Whiting Cream has not discovered "You-Tube."  Eventually, I will find them and show them to you, so that you may experience what torture truly is.  

So, as I lay here hacking up a lung and simply trying to breath, TV is my only outlet.  It may be the best incentive never to get sick again!