Image of a television for representative purposes.
Credit: iStock Photo
In the 1980s era of terrestrial television, we had to power on our Dyanora set manually. It buzzed loudly – crude, but music to our ears as children. The brand’s tagline was “keep in touch”.
The Doordarshan montage, which seemed to take an eternity, signalled that programmes were about to begin. News bulletins, introduced with a heavy signature tune designed to command attention, were read by readers who were celebrities in their own right: Salma Sultan, Shammi Narang, and Rini Simon, among several others. We would play guessing games about who would appear on screens that evening.
Ad jingles were melodic and catchy with simple themes – the sort you wouldn’t want to skip, even if you could. There was Sunil Gavaskar endorsing Dinesh Suitings, Kapil Dev saying ‘Palmolive da jawaab nahi’ at the height of his popularity, and Salman Khan singing in a breezy Campa Cola ad. Many of these commercials, now circulating on social media, bring a rush of nostalgia to Gen-Xers for a vanished world.
Our favourite programmes—Giant Robot, He-Man, Malgudi Days, Humlog, Chitrahaar and the weekly films—were broadcast on certain days. We awaited them keenly. Waiting, indeed, was the defining feature of our viewing.
That patience carried us into the late 1980s and even the 1990s. A youthful Prannoy Roy, with his familiar “Good evening and welcome”, introduced us to ‘The World This Week’ on Doordarshan—a window to international news. In the 1990s, S P Singh would close the Aaj Tak bulletin with “intezaar kijiye kal tak” (wait until tomorrow), and we did just that.
From frugal television menus we have moved on to convergence – now we can binge endlessly, 24X7. Content is king. There is, to be sure, a wealth of storytelling available thanks to OTT platforms. Everything is immediate. Advertisements intrude from every direction, but that, we are told, is engagement – the queen.
No longer do we wait for programmes; an OTT giant tells us our watchlist is waiting. Everything is marketed as “binge-worthy”. Watch this, watch that, watch it all — for there is no tomorrow.
Everything is faster and noisier now. Frenzy and FOMO consume us as we binge. We slip into our own little private universes in search of more novel, more visceral experiences. While new content can indeed educate and enlighten, it is often explicit and unfiltered, overstimulating and addictive. Where to draw the line is anyone’s guess.
Interestingly, I recently read of a Seattle-based company that has developed a tin-can phone. Similar to a landline, it is designed for parents keen to delay handing their children a mobile. It allows social autonomy, but with parental controls – only approved contacts can call. That, surely, is going back in time!
(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH)