Nowadays television is dominated so much by all the cable channels. In homes which have a cable connection, the scene is dominated by the latest movies, soaps and cricket. No one seems to watch DD any longer. I was thinking that DD has sort of become the channel for the rural areas where there isnt any cable connection.
But over the last few weeks, I have been surprised by the fare thats on the DD tamil channel. DD has indeed transformed itself with the channel sporting the same kind of soaps, movie trailers, new movie songs through the night and other such shows. At the same time, some of the fare on DD has been far better than what you can find on other channels. One simple concept that DD has leveraged a lot has been live telephone call in shows. Yes, you have these song request shows on various channels which have been banal, but DD is not doing just that. For example every sunday morning, 10 am, the live sports quiz has been a great hit. Today, as I was flipping channels, I could not find better fare on any other channel at 10 in the morning. At least none of it was as exciting as this one. Come to think of it, quizzes make interesting programming always, more so in today's age of the internet and information hungry population. But one finds so little of quizzing shows on TV. Today's kids grow up so much on the scheming mother in laws and corrupt politicians of the soaps and movies that their parents watch and the various cartoons shows. There watch so little of informative programming from discovery or the pathetically little informative programming like quiz shows. While quizzing seems to be in short supply, atleast other kinds of good programs like the ones on NGC or discovery are still very much around but when do the kids get to watch them, given the prime time is full of soaps and the scheming characters that they are so full of.
Coming back to the DD program, it was great fun for over an hour. Though I tried hard but could not get a line to call, just the thrill of quizzing elevated my sunday morning experience. One only wishes that there is more of such good fare at prime time. After this one, I switch channels and there is this program on another channel which was matching answers by Moms and their kids to find out which mom knows her kid best!!! One question went, "Which is your kid's favorite song?". For those who know tamil movie songs, the mom answered "Appadi podu" and the kid answered "Manmada Raasa"!!!
Havent we had enough of movies and soaps?
