My friend Doss becomes nervous in February, since he has to recalculate his tax liabilities for the next year after the Budget is presented. The other day when I met him he was more fidgety than he had ever been. When I enquired about it, he said, “I am fed up with this channel selection business.”
“TRAI said it was for your benefit. You can choose the channels you want to watch instead of getting thrust with all unwanted and wanted channels in your package,” I said. “On the contrary, I am finding the channel-choosing exercise a laborious task. I have already done it thrice and yet my family is not satisfied,” he lamented. “The DTH service providers and TRAI say it is simple,” I said.
“It is so complicated that I feel that my cognitive functions are improving with every attempt I make to choose channels from a labyrinth of choices. I have to remember my consumer ID and password to log into the DTH signal provider’s website. You have curated packs, broadcasters’ packs and a la carte channels. Within those packs, you have platinum, gold and silver packs. Then you have Happy India, cricket and football packs.
You have South packs, North packs, Bangla pack, Punjabi pack, Malayalam pack, etc. And every time I change my mind, I had to wade through hundreds of channels to choose a few,” whined Doss and continued, “When I opted for a mix of a curated pack and a few a la carte channels, my wife accused me of being selfish in including more news channels and cutting out the channels that dish out sob stories and reality shows throughout the day. When I changed the package of channels as per my wife’s wish, my son was furious that some of his favourite sports channels were omitted.”
“Your son must be tech-savvy. You could have let him do all the channel selection work,” I suggested. “His choice of channel packages are not acceptable to my daughter. She wants kids’ channels in particular.
At the end of it all, the cost
of the packages should also fit into my monthly budget,” Doss grumbled.
“Don’t lose heart. TRAI said the channel prices would come down soon,” I encouraged him. “When I was in school we only had one Doordarshan TV channel to watch. Friday Chitrahaar and Sunday movie were the most sought after programmes. Life was simple,” he wistfully reminisced.