Shilpa Shetty, Neo, Water, STAR, AXN: what a line up

It’s been a funny ten days or so. Consider:

The Shilpa Shetty – Jade Goody racism row
The Neo sports commercial racism row
The nomination of Water to the Oscars
The ban on AXN
The Neo-Sports – Prasar Bharti spat
India’s two victories against the West Indies
The launch of the SRK – KBC
The resignations of Peter Mukerjea and Sameer Nair from STAR TV

Some line up, that.

First, Shilpa Shetty. The media (including the English Media) goes hammer and tongs at Jade Goody’s alleged “racism”. The Indian Embassy senses an opportunity and releases ads in leading UK papers inviting Goody to India, so that she might, through her experience, become a more understanding, accepting and tolerant human being. Goody is voted out of the show….
…. And applies for a visa to India.

Does the Indian Embassy issue a visa? After their more than public invitation, it will be egg in our collective faces if India does not extend a visa.

That’s when it gets interesting, and I’ll cut to Water. The shame of it – that Deepa Mehta had to shoot in Sri Lanka because Hindu fundamentalists in India destroyed her set and prevented her from shooting. And that we haven’t seen the film yet, while the rest of the world has.

And the Government of India will have to ensure that Jade Goody is safe, that she is not attacked and abused and, indeed, subjected to racist remarks during her proposed stay here. And that, I believe, is impossible to ensure.

And that’s why I’ll cut again, this time to Neo Sports’ commercial. Which, to me, is racist. Which, to many, is not racist. But when I saw the TVC for the first time, I did not jump out of my chair and yell “Racism”. Because we see racism in our midst all the time. We have pejorative appellations for Caucasians, for Blacks, for Tamilians, for Bengalees, for Sikhs, for every caste, creed and colour under the sun.

And we, as a nation, are upset with Jade Goody? Lovely.

Which brings me to AXN, which quickly apologized to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for their transgressing the policies set out in the proposed Broadcast Bill. Which I did not feel they had transgressed. But who wants to get into conflict with the I&B Ministry?

Neo Sports does. And they’re right in their stand. This is a business deal they’ve entered into, not a charity. And I’ll postulate an absurdity: What happens if the Ministry decides that it is of national interest for the terrestrial subscribers to watch KBC? And DD has to show it, and DD will not encrypt it, and DD will make the feed available to Tata Sky and Dish?

And for Neo, It’s worse because the Indian cricket team, though not playing well, is winning against the West Indies.

As SRK KBC is winning against anything else on TV, if the initial numbers are anything to go by.

Which brings me to Peter Mukerjea and Sameer Nair. Peter, who built the organization that is STAR India, and Sameer, whose instinctive touch made STAR Plus a winner.

And one wonders:
When will we stop being racist?
When will we have laws that regulate broadcasting instead of knee jerk, politically motivated decisionss?
When will we see Water in India?
Will the Jade Goody trip to India be a PR disaster for India?
Who will fill Peter Mukerjea’s shoes? Who will fill Sameer Nair’s?

Moral Police Ministry arrests AXN

That’s all we needed. Whims and fancies of a Minister for Information and Broadcasting are enough for a channel to be banned for two months.
AXN airs the “World’s Sexist Advertisements” post 11 PM, and the MIB believes the show was affecting “public morality”.
This, despite the fact that the proposed Broadcast Bill explicitly (pun unintended) allows adult content to be aired after 11 PM.
And, as Governments in India do, they go after soft targets that get them the headlines. There is no effort to stop the sale of pornographic (and, one must add, pirated) DVDs which are available on the streets of every metro in India and accessible to anyone, major or minor, with Rs. 50 to spare. But going after vendors on the streets could mean a loss of votes, while going after AXN would not.
The possible repercussions of this decision are too horrific to consider. I haven’t seen the program that caused AXN to be banned, but, from what one gathers from reports on the content, there are any number of programs on any number of other channels which could easily result in their being banned when measured by the same yardstick.
On the surface, AXN does not seem to have crossed any of the limits set by the proposed Broadcast Bill. However, that is not how the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting has interpreted the show.
Where does that leave programming heads and scheduling heads? At the mercy of a self-righteous individual who could cause a channel to be banned, to cause revenues to be in suspended animation, to cause jobs to be lost?
In this age of colour TV, we need a Black and White policy in place. Where there is no grey on when the MIB can, and cannot, ban a channel.
And something like an AXN ban cannot happen again.

...and the law is not an ass

Prathibha Naitthani, the Lecturer from St. Xavier’s College who (successfully) filed a Public Interest Litigation asking the courts to step in and stop adult movies being telecast on Star Movies, HBO and Zee Studio, filed another one asking for censorship of programs including Baywatch, Sex and the City and Bikini Island.
The Bombay High Court, while disposing the petition held (as reported in the Indian Express) “that although the Act prescribes all telecast programs be subject to censorship, the government had more important things to worry about than waste time on this…”
That’s the good part.
The bad part? The Court has directed the Central Board for Film Certification to evolve a mechanism for checking content, the same IE report adds.
So a board with an average age of 50 plus will decide what a country with an average age that is hurtling south should watch.
Not cool, no.

pigsandwings impact: ASCI hauls up XXX condoms

Not really. Unlikely that anyone at the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has read this blog. Unlikely that Sharmila Tagore, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi or SK Arora have read the blog. If you haven’t read the previous post on XXX flavoured condoms, click here. Well, at least we were the first to make a noise about it.
To cut a long story short, the manufacturers of XXX flavoured condoms (you can’t get more original than that), have been asked to immediately withdraw the TVC by the ASCI. That’s all ASCI can do: ask. They cannot enforce. Adding muscle to ASCI’s request is Sharmila Tagore, Censor Board Chairman. She, too, asks. She cannot ban it either. Tagore felt that, perhaps, DKT India (the manufacturer of the originally named XXX flavoured condoms) was targeting only “raunchy teenagers”. Therefore, it ought not to be telecast during the Champions Trophy as the programme is assuredly for family viewing (Mandira nothwithstanding).
The product, according to Sutosi Batliwala, GM Marketing, DKT India, would encourage those “who did not use condoms because they were repulsed by the smell of latex,” and not because they wanted to promote oral sex.
Tagore ( I kid you not here) felt the campaign was not “in good taste”.
The Times of India article (where I read about the ASCI request) calls for a couple of whether-pigs-have-wings questions. How come there is absolutely no debate on why SET MAX accepted the release order and agreed to telecast the ads? Why didn’t Messrs. ASCI, Dasmunsi, Tagore and Arora ask SET MAX to stop airing the commercial?
Hello?

A freedom could be lost – all for the airing of a condom ad

Every time the Government of India suggests that TV channels get their act together and self regulate content or face some kind of censorship, there are howls of protest from the protectors of the freedom of the press – and from the management of TV channels.
And often, these protests are hollow.
While the English movie channels are in discussion with the censorship board to find a way out of the adult content imbroglio, a lot of the players forget the past.
STAR, for example, forgets that for the first few years of their existence, all content had to conform to the rules defined by the Television Entertainment Licensing Authority of Hong Kong, and that they had an internal Standards and Practices (S&P) department which cleared every single commercial that went on air.
S&P checked commercials for a number of issues, including, for example, claims. I remember the Ponds Age Defying Complex ad was rejected for making claims that could not be verified by an independent agency, and the commercial went on air with a super with some clarifications.
Ads were rejected for being unsuitable for certain time bands, too. For example, you could not advertise alcohol, innerwear (those days we called them underwear) and condoms till 9.00 PM.
And the fear of TELA ensured that STAR conformed. It was self regulation: TELA did not require you to check with them before airing any content; they monitored the channels and you got more than rapped on the knuckles if you stepped out of line. You could lose your license to uplink.
When Sony launched, they all but photocopied STAR’s S&P book – and the S&P department at Sony was all-powerful.
Today, I don’t know if either STAR or Sony has an S&P department at all.
And today, when all the channels want self-regulation, the first thing they need to demonstrate is that they are committed to self-regulation.
That’s why there is more than a degree of concern when SET MAX airs condom ads all through their telecast of the Champion’s Trophy.
Sony’s stated objective when they got into the business of airing live cricket was to broad base the viewership. Innovations such as Extraa Innings were meant to make the game more inclusive, to get families to watch the telecast rather than just adult males.
And you air condom ads all through the game?
Perhaps, before they win the freedom to air adult content without Government supervision and interference the channels need to demonstrate that they are indeed adults.
Or face the prospect of being treated like children.
And be told what they can do and what they cannot.