Kerala   

Politics, live on TV

Former Minister T. U. Kuruvilla

Once upon a time, live television for Malayalis meant almost exclusively sporting events like World Cup football and Olympics. Then, years later, we watched Makaravilakku at Sabarimala, Thrissur Pooram and the Nehru Trophy boat race from the comforts of our drawing rooms.

Late on Monday night, we saw, live on television, a Minister coming to the residence of the Chief Minister to submit his resignation letter.

Most of the Malayalam channels had sent their reporters, cameramen and, of course, OB vans to Cliff House in Thiruvananthapuram to bring to their viewers live the scenes of PWD Minister T.U. Kuruvilla coming to meet Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan at his residence.

Live scenes were aired, during the news, by most channels from Cliff House by 9 p.m., well before Mr. Kuruvilla arrived along with two other Kerala Congress (Joseph) MLAs, V. Surendran Pillai and Mons Joseph.

From about 10.30 p.m., for an hour, there were only live visuals accompanied by the reporters’ voice-overs and questions from the anchors in the studios.

The delay in Mr. Achuthanandan’s arrival from Kasaragod added a bit of drama to the whole show.

The television channels chose to provide live coverage because they were confident that they would get plenty of eyeballs for the telecast; Malayalis are highly politically literate, after all.

P. K. Ajith Kumar

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