Far Vision

Finally, an olympic Gold for India!! And the cliched " Expectations of a Billion Fulfilled " was flashed across almost all news channels. Some channels even cancelled there scheduled programmes and features about the ne Shooting Champion aired instead.

We all saw how calm and composed the champ was even though he had done something no other Indian Sportsperson had done in an individual event. When the whole nation was basking in the euphoria, only one place was as calm and cold as if nothing had happened. The place or rather the channel was Doordarshan Sports. With my little knowledge of hindi, I think Door means Far or Long and Darshan means Seeing or sight.

This is especially true for the channel. They showed the award ceremony and also, the Finals of that event, which thankfully happened when the air time was scheduled for that very event. Had it been delayed by a few minutes, we would ve seen Fencing or Judo or even a game of Handball happening between Country X and Country Y, whose locations wouldnt be known to even a small fraction of the viewers. But when it was expected to air something related to the Guy or atleast, more of some live action from the Olympics, especially with DD being the sole channel to broadcast the event across India, the good Old Doordarshan came to the fore. The Highlights of the previous day were aired at that time. It certainly would not have been a sin to take a break from the Scheduled programme and air another programme, especially since an event of such magnitude had taken place.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Whenever a Live event is being shown, they would suddenly cut short the broadcast to bring us an UPDATE, only that the update would be about the medal tally and positions of a day before! In case they didnt know, there's something called a Ticker which even a Music channel like MTV uses these days to bring in latest gossips in the film industry. Its all about talk, talk and more talk in the supposed LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE coverage of the Games. Of course, such non sensical talk is exclusive to DD. THey distort factsand are most of the time ignorant even about the country from which a particular sportsperson may hail. Thus, Michael Phelps may suddenly find himself to be an Australian citizen while Lionel Messi will become Brazilian, atleast for a fraction of a second!

I believe that the DD guys are still in the past. And they ve named it aptly, Door Darshan, The "Door" as in distance is the DISTANT past. The sets look ordinary, there is no modern technology to provide uninterrupted coverage of any event.

I think DD should be included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. Because the technology is so old that within the next 5-10 years, these guys would be the only ones using it and should be preserved for the future generations to see how they aired TV programmes in the 20th century.