The craze for wild life, travelling and science TV Channels

I am sure most of us have had faced this situation. At home, your dad / wife / mother / sister have all their time slots defined. At 8 it could be a serial at Colors, 8.30 at Zee, 9 at Star Plus and 10 at Life Ok (of course, for Mahadev). Do not go by the time I have mentioned, I never kept a track of these time slots anyway.

And in afternoons, there is repeat telecast of the shows and your wife / mother / sister missed because there were seeing other ones which clashed.

And I have to blame Ekta Kapoor here. She is the one who convinced Star to move Prime Time from 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm with Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and the likes. You know, they caused a drastic change in the lifestyle of people, and their bio-clocks.

Coming back to the topic, I have a craze for wild life and science channels. Among them are Discovery, Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo, The History Channel, Fox Traveler, The Living Channel (TLC), NDTV Good times, Animal Planet, National Geographic, NatGeo Wild, NatGeo Adventure etc. Barring Discovery Science (which is yet to be part of my DTH provider Reliance Digital’s portfolio) I technically can see all of them.

That’s right. I technically can see all of them. But practically it is never easy. I see you are nodding your head. That’s fine, if you did nod then we all are in the same boat.

The craze for these meaningless and utterly boring shows gets on my nerves. I do like some of the English ones by the way. Like Castle, 30 Rock, Two and Half men etc. But these are cannot be compared to overt melodramatic ones on Star Plus, Colors, Zee.

The Game here has a name – Television Rating Points or as us mortals know, TRP.

For one, the higher the TRP, the more say these channels have in the Advertisement rates. So if a serial is not doing well, and is not raking in higher TRPs, it is axed, along with future of those who are working on it.

But many of those who were on the verge of being axed, still survive, and you guessed it right. By adding the Masala twist. Like jumping the show by 20 years or killing one of the characters and bringing him/her back into the show under a different name, then s/he takes revenge and is back on the show as the original characters.

Some times, I really question myself. Do these people who get mad and crazy over these serials really have brains?

At my home, it is the same story. Its only weekends that I get time to see something different from my computer / iPad screen and I hardly get to choose the channel I want to watch. Some times, I am pardoned, some times I am just as unlucky as you guys are!

I strongly believe that watching wild life, food & travelling or science television channels really helps one become more knowledgeable – the very strong reason I will suggest these channels. There are so many things that you do not know about this world and these channels show you them through your idiot box – the only time it does not look like an idiot.

Watching the wild life, for one, does not cease to amaze me for a life time. I would have never known the fabulous Serengeti (one of my places or events to see / visit in a lifetime list) or never known about animals and birds in Galapagos islands or that there are Dolphins that actually live in Ganges (River Ganga).  This is just a very small or minuscule example that knowledge is abundant.

Learning from the Soap operas are limited, and I believe it works more in the negative than positive. The Lead characters are going through trouble some periods, often playing a subdued life and vamps laugh away with their torturous ideas, even though Lead characters always have the last laugh. In the process, the viewers get new ideas to play real life vamps for so real life  characters.

People literally give bad words to these actresses playing vamp, and the actor playing Shiva in Mahadev on Life Ok Channel actually have people falling on his knees… What The Freak?

PS: I have a lovely wife, and am very fortunate that I do not have to struggle with her for the remote. She, like myself, does hate the Soap Operas and by that example, I am guessing many others too will be fortunate enough.

PPS: All Logos in the Feature Image are registered trademarks of their respective owners and they hold the copy rights for their logos. All Logos have been picked from respective Channel websites or from Logo libraries.

Last Talk: Please inspire your kids to watch Wild Life, Travelling & Science TV Channels. Never let them see these Soap Operas. A humble request.