When children ask the questions

THE story was about a spate of kidnappings and murders in Champaran, Bihar. The reporters? Two school children from the district who turned in a heart-warming performance, briskly interviewing district officers, and local people. They loved the opportunity given, and it showed. Star News presented what was easily the most imaginative array of specials to mark International Children's Day of Broadcasting last Sunday. Apart from the Champaran story, which also took in the state of governance in the district, "India Matters" featured, right through the week, moving vignettes about children handling challenges in their lives.

A special edition of the "Big Fight" looked at the state of school education with children asking the questions along with Rajdeep Sardesai. Here was public school India displaying its poise, confidence and mettle. The school children on the show hammered away at the official from the Ministry of Education who was hard put to explain why no real reform of the educational system is taking place when it affects such a critical constituency: the future generation. Any parent, frustrated at the mindless academic load children have to ingest, would have warmed to this episode.

International Children's Day of Broadcasting is an idea UNICEF came up with in 1992. Ever since, it is observed on the second Sunday of December with children taking over some broadcasting functions on that day. Star News also had them interviewing Amitabh Bachchan and Arun Jaitley. "Small Talk with Amitabh Bachchan" was somewhat saccharine, more Bachchan's fault than that of the children who interviewed him. He could not resist the opportunity to lagao hazaar bhaashan, to use the college lingo of my time. Arun Jaitley was interviewed by children gathered from different parts of the country and different strata of society on Rajat Sharma's "Janata ki Adalat". It was a sobering conversation for any one who watched. The bottom line of the discussion was that the laws are there to protect children but without a safety net in the system they cannot offer adequate protection from child labour, abuse, begging, and child marriage.

Doordarshan's efforts on the National Channel however, made one wince. The children asked information and broadcasting questions of the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Sushma Swaraj. She held forth on Direct-To-Home and conditional access. Not surprisingly, neither sounded spontaneous. There were more pious interactions with the Prime Minister and Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi. Simpered a child to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, "Mujhe achcha bachcha banna hai to mai uske liye kya karun? (I want to be a good child so what should I do to achieve that?") What is it about Doordarshan that makes children talk like that?

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When AXN was launched two years ago, Sony Television's chief in India Kunal Dasgupta declared with a broad grin that the name was supposed to represent the word action as pronounced by Indians. So day after tomorrow AXN will launch here the ultimate "akson" show: "Survivor", in which you drop a bunch of humans and some personal cargo just off the coast of an island inhabited only by creepy crawlies. They swim ashore and then figure out how they are to survive there. A film crew that lives on a nearby island films them for a few hours every day. The 16 hostages are between 23 and 63 years, they get divided into two teams, and periodically they vote one person off the island until only one is left. He or she wins a million dollars. As other TV shows have shown, there are easier ways to win a million dollars, but some people like living dangerously.

"Survivor" surpassed "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" in the ratings when CBS premiered it in the United States. It represents the acme of reality programming, a genre in which you put humans into strange situations and film their unscripted responses. Call it voyeurism or call it a thirst for novelty, it delivers the audiences. AXN currently airs a reality strip at 8 pm every day with "Who Dares, Wins". It features a host, a sucker, and a dare. The programme is Australian in origin. Sample commentry: "Jyne, your one bryve, bryve, lydy."

The ultimate reality TV is news, you cannot get more rivetting footage than legislators hurling mikes and chairs at each other. But to convert it into entertainment the trend is to put real people into artificial situations. As an American critic put it wryly, "We want to see them eating oozing worms. We generally do not want to see them changing contact lenses". "Survivor" picked a Borneo island called Pulao Tiga, and the producer said he made sure the wildlife on it was manageable: no big cats, just snakes, monitor lizards, and various funny-faced creatures.

A follow up series of "Survivor" is being filmed in the Australian Outback. And the American PBS (public service broadcasting) Channel is doing a different sort of clone. Called "Frontier House", it is putting three groups of people into frontier conditions of the 1800s and filming them over six months as they cook on open fires, plant gardens, and make butter and soap. After futuristic stuff such as "Star Wars", the new trend in entertainment seems to be to go the Adam and Eve way. From December 19, "Survivor" airs at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and repeats noon on Sundays.

Fighting Back: J.K. Jain, through Jain TV. After he was charged with being an Inter Services Intelligence agent in a bizarre Bharatiya Janata Party family quarrel, Jain's channel has not only been airing messages of support from obscure quarters, it is also inviting people to send in their views on the subject along with photographs of themselves. Here is your chance to make it on TV. And periodically there are announcements promising a major expose soon on Brajesh Mishra, the Prime Minister's right hand man.

Exclusive news?: You could buy rights to cover beauty contests and other live entertainment events. Now it seems you can also obtain rights to newsy events patronised by heads of government. The Pioneer reports that Udaya TV saw to it that other channels including Doordarshan were not allowed to stay at the venue of a feliticitation function for Rajkumar in Bangalore organised by the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce last Sunday. It said it had got the rights to cover the function. Was Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, who was present, surprised?

Running scared: Advertisers, from Chennai Doordarshan. A distressed producer has written to this column to say that while the Chennai Doordarshan Kendra used to be the highest revenue getter among the Southern Regional Kendras. Today few advertisers are interested in placing commercials on DD's programmes. They are only interested in patronising the satellite channels. He says Doordarshan is extending the number of episodes in order to help the producers, and permits the banking of commercial spots, but takers for these spots are hard to come by. There is no demand even for mega serials on DD. Having produced six episodes of a film-based programme for a prime time slot on DD Chennai, he finds the market supremely uninterested. This column has drawn attention before to the sharp drop in the earnings of the Chennai kendra. Is DD worried?

SEVANTI NINAN

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com

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