Doordarshanøs horror show

IN Media Practice | 30/03/2005

Laxman hit by a vicious bouncer? That gives us space for at least three ads, and five if heøs retiring hurt.

From cricinfo

Rahul Bhatia

March 26, 2005

It was the final ball of an over on a tense last day at Kolkata. The game had been nobody`s to begin with and now, after four hectic days of madly swinging scales, Asim Kamal, with a smile on his lips and a tree trunk in his hands, was doing the improbable for a Pakistan team in dire need of a sign. So it was on this last ball that Kamal, after pushing it toward the square boundary, hesitated as his partner thundered for a second run. By now a fielder had intercepted and thrown the ball back with surprising economy of movement. Nothing could have prepared you for what came next. Not decades of cricket-watching or worldly wisdom, for what came next, as a panic-stricken batsman raced the ball, was a commercial break.

It was also, in other words, the curse of the national interest. For a while, Doordarshan, India`s oldest and probably most stagnant television channel has argued that any cricket game involving India at home should be broadcast by it for free, regardless of whether the rights have already been bought over by a private television channel. This, it insists by some stretch of logic, is because showing cricket is in the national interest. Whatever your stand on this, it goes against a basic business principle: you get only what you pay for. But if the reason behind its demands was recent, the final product it produced for the cricket-watching public remained staid, uninterested, bored. It stripped cricket bare, and tore all pretensions away; cricket, under Doordarshan, stands nude as the pesky intrusion between commercials.

And so it has come to be once again. The legendary four- and five-ball overs have disappeared, but with the benefit of seeing six legitimate balls, have come the price of not seeing anything further. Programmers stand at attention ready to cut to ads at the first hint of a delay. Tendulkar annoyed with the sightscreen? You could fit a motorbike advert before play resumes. Laxman hit by a vicious bouncer? That gives us space for at least three ads, and five if he`s retiring hurt. If a ball crashes into the stumps, before the bail hits the ground, you are watching a cola ad. How is that for speed?

Read the rest at http://ind.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/CRICKET_NEWS/2005/MAR/215286_INDPAK2004-05_26MAR2005.html

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