This is a look at television in India in 1996. It points out that with the introduction of satellite and cable TV there has been a tremendous boom in Indian television in the last 15 years. In a country like India with its huge population, 50 percent literacy rate, weak communications network and linguistic and cultural diversity, TV could have tremendous power for change. The film indicates that TV thus far has fallen far short of its potential. TV programs have been directed primarily at entertaining the middle class, and, with the exception of programs on such topics as family planning and sanitation broadcast by Doodarshan, the official Government television channel, television has ignored the rural majority.
The narrator tells us that commercial television first came to India at the time of the Gulf War when through satellite broadcasting Star TV broke the monopoly of Doodarshan. Star brought popular musical channels and lively news programs. The real breakthrough came in 1992 with the introduction of Zee TV providing soap operas, popular music and dance, sitcoms and news broadcast in Hindi. It forced Doodarshan to start its own popular channel called "Metro." Now there are a dozen satellites, broadcasting in all major languages with about 40 channels to choose from and reaching 15 million homes. Most of the TV shows are produced in the Indian film capital, Mumbai (Bombay). As demand for new shows has increased, more and more producers are resorting to showing old Hindi popular films. India has the second largest television advertising market in the world but its economic impact is uncertain. While one commentator said that this advertising helps the government's economic liberalization program by stimulating interest in new products, another pointed out that advertising has created more useless consumerism and siphoned money from savings.
The video alternates between snippets from popular TV shows and learned commentaries by producers and professors. The excerpts from Indian TV films showing lively popular musical and dance routines and bits from melodramatic soap operas in both Hindi and English provide some provocative and interesting moments and some idea of what Indians view on television. The weakest part of the video is in its treatment of its major theme—the effect of TV on Indian culture. Although there is reference to the way in which modern ideas on women have been introduced through rebellious soap opera heroines, there is nothing said about the way musical programs have influenced musical tastes or how such programs as the serialized epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, have influenced popular Hinduism. Nor is there any mention of the impact of the news programming on Indian politics. The video seems too narrow in its subject matter to appeal to high school students and too simplistic for students in college-level communications courses.
