The Wedding Crashers

I still haven't got over it. No not the fact that Ash and Abhishek got married but the fact that a news channel ran the SAME story with ABSOLUTELY no NEWS the ENTIRE DAY! I kid you not people.

So let's start at the beginning. Since the news channel ...oh to hell with it...it was Headlines Today...since they hadn't been invited to the wedding they got two of their reporters dressed in wedding finery and stationed them at the studio. And they proceeded to talk and talk and talk about the most inane stuff I have ever heard in my life. Which I will get to in a bit.

So there's a camera stationed outside Amitab's house 'Jalsa'. And the "whole world" was waiting with bated breath for Abishek to clamber on his horse and ride out in all glory to his other house 'Prateeksha'. And our anchors back in studio chatter about nothing for 2 hours before Abhishek finally comes out. Like:

Male anchor: So do you think Abhi will come out in 5, 10, 15 or 20 mins?
Female Anchor (giggling to eat up air time): Oh we could bet on that!
MA: Cricket's not the only thing we can place bets huh?
HA HA HA HA - that's them laughing not me. I was busy rearranging my features after the 'what the....' look.

And it goes on. When a sliver of Abhishek is seen through the side window of the huge bus parked in front of the house, the two anchors are in raptures.

MA: "Oh there he is! The moment we have all been waiting for"

Er...it is?

FA (with a theatirical sigh): "If only I could go whisper in his ear 'Jhalak dhikla ja'"

Sure why don't you do just that? Oh yes of course...coz you're a journalist and NOT A CRAZED fan whispering demented songs in his ear.

It was pathetic. The camera could only show you glimpses of people arriving, half of whom the reporters failed to recognise. Only the really famous ones like Jaya Pradha (???) were excitedly commented upon.

FA: "Oh there's Jaya Bachchan! I'm so glad we could see her!"

Er...why exactly?

And then we had the MA give us some juicy news.

MA: "We have just recieved information from our on-the-scene reporter that Ash is going to be riding on two dolis! "

Breaking news!

MA: "Yes! And the first one she will get into at Prateeksha and then get off at Prateeksha itself!"

We never heard whether Ash would ride the second doli into her bathroom or it was meant for higher purposes.

FA: "For interesting updates like that keep watching!"

Groan.

Of course the channel devoted the whole morning to interviewing (or rather yelling incoherent questions at) this crazy (and very unattractive) woman who claimed she was married to Abhishek. She was obviously after the publicity and any half-brained twit could see that. She kept repeating the same things and the reporters kept asking silly questions.

OK now let me get to the point of the whole post (yes there is a point) ...what on EARTH are news channels thinking when they air stuff like this throughout the day? The occasional 'other' news that they deemed important enough ran by on ticker tape. Why point a camera at a gate the whole day, waiting for a Bollywood star to come out only to get into a bus? Do they really think that that's what people want to watch ALL day?

This is not an isolated event. Other news channels too run atrocious stories based on flimsy facts and uninteresting news. And everything is backed by 'experts' - psychologists, professionals and god knows who else - who sit there and declare things like "Jhanwi is deluded. Perhaps she really believes that Abhishek married her!"

HELLO?

Mostly what irks me is that the audience is assumed to be foolish, ignorant, hungry for celebrity gossip, excited by the channel's idea of sensational news and dying for gruesome news. And please don't even think we can't see through the 'Since we don't have enough information let's put some experts on a panel, play reruns of the same visuals and ask the same old questions to our harried reporters on the scene'.

We KNOW.