DesiDabba - Boss, Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaye
To put it simply, DesiDabba is our effort to be your one-stop guide into one of the world's most lucrative television market, The Indian Television Industry. So enjoy and bring on the traffic. More about Desi Dabba
The Khiladi Factor
Formula for a successful reality show? Simple - Hire a celebrity. But not just any celebrity, a Bollywood superstar. Really, it’s that simple provided you have the monetary means to do so.
And to mark their entry into the competitive Indian television industry, COLORS has managed to just do that. Box-office action hero, Akshay Kumar is all set to make his small parda debut with reality show - Fear Factor Khatron Ke Khiladi. If I am not mistaken, this is basically a revival of desi-Fear Factor, which once upon a time was aired on AXN and hosted by what’shisface Mukul Dev.
Bray-King News !
Breaking News … CBI cordons off Sector 25 in Noida, breaking News, Lie detector Test on Krishna, Rama, Kumbhkarna. I am not able to find more characters to the string of names which come up on everyday news stories these days. The news items only pertain to Neeraj Grover’s gruesome murder or Aarushi and Hemant’s mystery. Or for a change cops charged for raping a woman, and the woman killing herself for not being heard by the Haryana Police.
I would rather the news channels dedicate their prime time for news which has more sense, than some botched up investigative cases which are of no consequence for people far across India. Instead, what these channels bring on the idiot boxes for all of us is nothing but Breaking News, which either has to do with cordoning off, lie detector tests or suicide which maybe murder. I shudder to think what the new age, impressionable children and teenagers are being fed with as far as news is concerned.
Review 10 Ka Dum : Not Bad For Starters
(Well its Salman Khan. And I tend to get a wee-bit emotional when it comes to him but then again this is no new news for you. Which is why when the time came to review the very first episode of 10 Ka Dum, I choose my dearest friend to take it while I could spend the entire 60 minutes simply ogling at the man and not worrying about the rest.)
Take a glass piece to the eye, crinkle up your nose, and revisit a much thinner Salman Khan of two decades ago. His expressions, his accent and his I’m-so-Kewl attitude remain much the same as he played the bad-boy-turned-good in the Rekha and Farook Sheikh starrer Biwi Ho Toh Aisi (1988).
Bollywood Blogging, Welcome Salman Bhai.
After Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan took on blogging, the other inhabitants of B-Town have woken up to the power of writing on the web.
Salman Khan will blog on a Blogspot website run at Sony Entertainment, the producers of the reality television show Dus Ka Dum. Sallu has already posted two blogs on Dus Ka Dum that too from Australia, where he is shooting at the moment. [Link: Mid-Day]
Yes, you heard it correct folks apna Sallu has entered the nasty world of Hindi Film Industry blogging. Agreed, the reason behind is nothing more than a strategic PR move i.e. publicity for upcoming reality show, Dus Ka Dum on Sony Television. But then similar motive/s is what got the likes of Aamir Khan and Big B enter the blogging scene as well. And look today, they are prime source of Bollywood Bitching for our Page 3 writers.
March Of Time - Radio and Television
Time was when as kids we would listen to jingles on the radio and sing along whenever we heard them - I still remember the famous Glycodin syrup ad , which went something like this - ” mummy had a coughing fit, dear dear me ,All day all night ,dear dear me, Glycodin will make it go ,just you wait & see, la, la , la la, la la” (oops forgotten this line) “glycodin for me ! “. The there was the famous Lifebuoy ad - Tanduristhi ke raksha karta hai Lifebuoy… ” which one still remembers when one sees Lifebuoy soap ! All these ads belonged to an era much before the advent of the television.
A major development in the area of entertainment was brought about with advent of the idiot-box - today’s kids would be hard put to believe that there was a time when television did’nt exist in Indian homes! TV medium being part of All India Radio , programmes were decided by it and even telecast would begin only in the evening and wind up in the night -24 x 7 just did not exist ! I still remember eagerly looking forward to Chitrahaar every Wednesday evening and a movie every Sunday evening. Television sets being expensive ( by those days’ standards ) , owning a TV set was a big thing ! Parents also did’nt suffer from anxiety about children neglecting their studies to watch TV, simply because the number of programmes were not many (most of them were in fact quite boring e.g krishi darshan ) and neither was the duration of telecast very long . It was no different when Indian television went for a makeover ,changing from black and white to colour- By now Doordarshan ( as it came to be called ) increased the duration by having some programmes in the morning as well on Sundays and a few hours in the afternoon on weekdays. The nation got hooked on to watching “Hum Log” (India’s first ever daily serial ) , followed by Ramayan and Mahabharata- simutaneously Doordarshan encompassed the entire nation and not only the big metros. By now companies vied with each other to sponsor programmes and thus came into existence, ads on tv too ! Some of them like “Washing powder Nirma, doodhi se safedi ” , Lalithaji ’s Bhai Saab “( Surf ), “such much kaafi bada hai ” (Okay Bathing soap), “Utterly Butterly delicious”(Amul Butter), “Char Boondon wala ” (Ujala whitener) cannot be forgotten .
