Alvida Patidev !

They're doing a new show: Celebrity Corpse, where you dig up someone after five years and try to guess who they were. -- Paul Merton [on the epidemic of tv celebrity shows]


The channel office looked like a disco on a Sunday morning….

Quite a mayhem which was the left over of the brain storming that was going on… the program team, the marketing team, the strategy people and who not… they stormed and stormed and what was left was misery and miserable looking faces….

Now what do we do? …. said the program head…. All the internal concepts seem to be non starters….

Rakhi is married off and now they are parading Rahul Mahajan as the groom… said some one.. Disgusting….

Jealousy was the raison d'être behind the whole discussion at the main meeting room of Channel U that day… all other entertainment channels were scoring well with the Such Ka Samna’s, Dus ka Dum’s and the Swayamvar’s…

I thought the Rakhi drama will bomb.. Who in the world would have thought that people will sit and watch and even adapt to this bizarre concept..? HUH… Rakhi and Marriage.. What a contradiction…?

3.5 TVR to 6.3 TVR the final day.. said some one with anguish and derision …. Our viewers also… sab ke sab budhu hai….

I had thought that the Star guys have gone bonkers …said the programme head as if in revelation… Rakhi would be the last one any sensible guy would want to marry…
But see what happened?

People laughed …… the Marketing guy quoted from Einstein… “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality”

We should think in that angle.. Something so vague and shocking…? Far from reality?

May be we should take a list of all controversy kids… and…said the Marketing head..

And… disrupted some one … marry them off???????…

What are we ..? …..A TV channel or a matrimony agency… ?

Choot bole Kawwa kate… said some one.. Why not we do the other side of sach ka samna…

Ridiculous… thundered a director… cant we have something original? I cannot believe that we have only copy paste ideas …

By the way sir.. came a rejoinder … none of this programmes are original… they all have parentage in the west…

Then scan the west… said some one.. What is left..?

Ohhh that is like plenty… but what do we want? Controversy? Or TVR with controversy? .. or just to redefine the reality TV genre and create a grand daddy of Reality TV like Allen Funt's Candid Camera..?

Now that was like the real issue… FINALLY !!!

A long minute of silence…

Think about this……. finally said the programme head… I don’t claim this to be true but this is what I think of it.. the success of reality television is due to its ability to provide humiliation……

Question marks bloomed in faces across the room…..

I know….. I know ….said the guy .... what I said was that the general viewer have a desire to see others humiliated and we will provide it in plenty…..

A Shame show…? Humiliation TV? …………Said some one quite unconvincedly

Ahem… the task is tough but we want something or else we shall be dumped into oblivion…

And we don’t want Bakra , we don’t want KBC or Indian Idol, no no to Sa Re Ga Ma, and never a laughter challenge or a boogie woogie…

Idea… shouted some one….

Why don’t we have a “Dump your Husbands” show… said the guy standing up…. We will call it Al vida pati dev!!! It will be a shock for the viewer… a shame for the abandoned and a lot of money for the channel and the sponser…

Silence rained ….

For sure it will create controversy…chat shows will feature it… MP’s will discuss it, moral police will attack it, but people will see it…..

No one clapped for they knew it was not what they want probably…

No one said a NO for they knew that MAY BE this is an IDEA that can redefine the reality TV genre,,,,,

Tailpiece: There used to be a time when you would come home, and reality was so crappy, you would turn on TV to watch stuff that people had made up, so that you could escape from the crappy reality. Now, you go out and deal with d**kheads and morons all day, and you come home and go, 'I just want to go home so I can watch d**kheads and morons on TV.'…

---Patton Oswalt