If asked, “Do you want to make money?” who would say No’. But, the clever person will always ask, a follow-up “How I am going to make money?”
The “entertainment biggies”, both in the West and at home, have forgotten this follow-up. So they go right ahead and air shows like-“who wants to be a Millionaire?” and “Kaun Banega Crorepati” (KBC).
To say that KBC is good fun would be an understatement. But, how is fun really being defined in this show? People are thronging to the show not to see Amitabh Bacchan so much and not in the least to prove their Intelligence by answering school level General knowledge. People watch this show, in numbers, ironically to see money rolling not into their pockets, but into someone else’s pockets. (All of them waiting disillusioned like Cyrus in the Pepsi advertisement saying-“Mera number aayega”).
One may ask what is wrong in making some fast buck. If cricketers, film actors/actresses and software engineers can do it, why not the common man? Well, making big money is no sin as far as the big notes match-up with big efforts. Now, would you call answering multiple choice questions for a few minutes, big efforts, and effort enough to win you lakhs? Ethics is not even keeping around the corner here. If KBC is lauded, then our corrupt politicians also need to be lauded, because both are involved in making easy money, which rightfully belongs somewhere else- to a country which is clothed outside in “material richness”, but inside is still an impoverished body. If countries like UK and USA started the game shows, it shows two things about them-
1) Their bulky economic status, and
2) Their strong inclination towards gambling, which keeps taking new forms.
Can a country like ours afford to gamble? KBC is plain money-hysteria gripping only the urbanites that think that Entertainment is impossible without lots of Money. They have linked the two so strongly that they have begun to think, sadly enough, that more entertainment necessarily means more money, that happiness is a costly affair. The question is how can common man call something entertaining when he is not even sure of participating in that event.
For the Entertainment Media involved, the aim is not really to entertain common man. What matters to private channels is the number of advertisements they get. The war between channels like Star TV, Zee, Sony, etc., for viewer ship, also doesn’t come into picture. The media know all too well that if they throw extravagance, viewer ship naturally follows. Media is only trading ideas of luxury and wealth to people, in turn for its own profits.
There is no doubt that a few people have really won lakhs in this game show. But considering TV to be a mass media, to a large number of people, the show will remain an empty dream.
The Media here is not only negating the value of money, but it is also showing the wrong way of making money, to the masses, which is dangerous. Imagine what a child or a young person would think, that one does not have to work to make money, just a game show will do.
The Media Baron’s should present entertainment, which is within the reach of the masses. The mistake that media is doing right now, is to present entertainment with a price tag which reads- “IMPOSSIBLE”.
Provided
by:Saraswathi B.T