Showing posts with label AXN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AXN. Show all posts

Thursday, January 18, 2007

The joys of telly!

I thought I would write a post on the misguided or mistaken view that two fairly senior journalists in television have about the internet and particularly user generated content. But, after everybody's favourite football administrator banned AXN yesterday, I feel forced somewhat to write this post. First, a defense of AXN. I do not for one second believe that the channel shows anything wrong - fair enough, it repeats the same shows over and over till the point of absolute boredom, but to ban them for showing risque adverts - on a show about risque adverts?
Y'know - other than banning propaganda channels shown by neighbouring countries - to the best of my knowledge Sushma Swaraj - everybody's favourite moral policewoman never banned any channels. Arun Jaitley as I&B Minister did ban TB6 - y'know that channel that used to show Playboy TV at 12 at night on weekends - the channel was never supposed to come into India anyway and one can even understand why that channel was banned. But this takes the cake! Look at it this way, Sushma Swaraj might have railed against FTV, but she never banned it!
And this man just doesn't shut up - he tries to precipitate a diplomatic incident as well. The man whose job it is to rescue Doordarshan - and do something about AIR (Even though I was amazed the other day when I put my tuner to 102.6 at eight in the evening and heard Death Metal - Death Metal, not hard rock or eveil Metallica or Megadeth type metal - this was serious stuff - at eight in the evening. Nothing wrong in that, but it does make you wonder why AIR FM doesn't get any adverts!). On the Shilpa Shetty incident, I think the woman who has in the recent past joined Yana Gupta on the list of VJM's squeeze's - Germaine Greer has a wonderful article about it. I agree, I think Shilpa is doing a fantastic job in showing us that working class Britain is still full of yobs and racists. But, my god she is milking it - little wonder William Hill has made her odds-on favourite.
And you want to see the sort of ads that AXN played to get banned - here is one to watch, risque, maybe. Suggestive, yes - but for God's sake!

EDIT : And thanks to the power of the big, bad, interwebs - we have Shilpa Shetty in the Big Brother House at YouTube, that wonderful repository of things!

Look at the related videos link for a lot more. I wonder if Miss Shetty will end up in a Hollywood production thanks to this fiasco. I still can't get over the protests in Patna - Why? This country is becoming weird too, no wait, we are weird. Yes, I agree, it is a surreal diplomatic crisis. Poor Gordon Brown, I feel for the man, he came to India to show off his credentials to the erstwhile colonials and he gets sucked into - this!