Im a trivia lover and since childhood was an avid quizzer , so would start with a piece of trivia which is in a way relevant to this post -"Video Killed the radio star" was the first video to be aired in MTV in North America and it was about singer whose career was cut short by television.
This refers to the changes in Home entertainment industry in 1960's ... till about 50's radio was the medium and voice was everything , when TV arrived it changed the whole game .
But it was in early 80s that TV became popular in our country , Doordarshan ruled the roost in 80s . We watched what they deemed fit and whatever time they chose . Infact for a long time many activities in life revolved around the timings of our favorite programs on TV. For instance 8pm in the evening meant English news on DD national . Wednesday evenings had Chitrahaar and in late 80s every Sunday at 9:30 am all activities used to come to halt across the country as religious epics used to be beamed on Natl Television !
But thankfully in early 90s before cable era ushered in unimaginable variety for the viewer and spawned a whole new industry. Late 90s brought a flurry of news channels soon they were beaming news 24x7 , democracy received another major boost !
In a few years public started getting more and more involved with the content that was being provided , shows like KBC set the dice rolling as it required public participation over phone and later through sms. Inspite of having charismatic and popular icons from acting world as hosts these shows were hit because of the involvement of 'aam junta' and the vibes shared between the host and the participants who the viewers felt could have been one of them.
This gave away to more and more game shows/ reality shows involving public , but again very minuscule proportion of the population managed to make it on screen . Along with the popularity of TV in Indian middle class , other electronic gadgets also started making their entry. The one with the biggest impact was mobile phones and in no time most of middle class Indians had a phone in their hand.
Next masterstroke from TV was to draw these people to participate in the shows , instead of a celebrity judge deciding which contestant stays in the show / gets booted out , general public were given the chance. Suddenly the ordinary viewer who was enthralled by all that was happening in this wonderful box started feeling important , now he had the chance to decide and control the show.
We have slowly moved on to era of user centric content ( a la Web 2.0 if you will )
Last couple of years has seen a whole new industry called Digital home entertainment sweep into households. Now the Indian television viewer has lot more options as a famous movie star tells during a service provider's Ads , he can pause live action , attend those phone calls , can be nice to relatives , can entertain guests , need not tussle with wife over remote without feeling he will miss the match/ she will miss the serial . The digital set top box with hard disk solves all the problems.
The next revolution slated to hit homes is called IPTV , we will have what is called Triple play.
Let me pause here as the aim behind this post was to talk about change that is happening in home entertainment ; So whats gonna happen next ?
(to be contd in another post)
1 comment:
Yes dude. But somehow, with advent and penetration of the internet, isn't the TV dying. I mean, it is certainly scaling up and adapting to the change better than the radio did in the '50s. Still, once we get broadband in its true sense where web pages load at the blink of our eye and video streams as if on TV, I wonder if TV would still hold its ground..!
Btw, how about the re-emergence of radio as a popular media of entertainment nowadays?
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