BENGALURU: I did something last month that I’d wanted to do for the longest time. I bought a subscription for TV channels – for all those movie, music and news channels that I’d forgotten. In some respects, in this brand-new, sparkling OTT world, I was missing the age of Cable TV.
For all the gifts that the OTT world is supposed to give us, it can get rather frustrating. We were told that the plethora of options would liberate us, and yet, we are chained to flipping and browsing in order to choose what to watch. Before you realise it, you have spent an hour merely browsing. Whatever you choose will never be good enough for everybody – no personalisation, no customisation, no satisfaction.
Perhaps the decision to opt for Cable TV came from childhood trauma. While the world called the television the ‘idiot box’, my parents considered it to be the ‘evil box’ – the epicentre of all things evil in the world. I had to sneak into friends’ homes to view the newest TV shows because we weren’t permitted to watch TV at home. In the fleeting moments that the television was available, cable television was denied to us. We were relegated to watching the joys of Krishi Darshan on Doordarshan.
Cable television helps you avoid the unwanted swayamwar you have to go through while choosing what to watch. Don’t like one? Switch to another. Watched a film earlier? Wait till the conflict arises (usually around the 25th minute in a well-written movie). And you get the entire bouquet of movie channels. Old movies that have Dharmendra grunting.
South Indian dubbed movies with names like Sooraj - The Sun or Natraj - The Pencil. Hollywood movies featuring monsters that only attack America like they got American Aadhar cards. And terrible movies. Not enough has been written about the worth of terrible movies. Good movies come with the pressure of your undying attention. Terrible movies are liberal that way. You can skip any part of the movie and return to it. With OTT, everybody watches the great movies, but what about the terrible ones? Who gets to watch them? Me!
Which brings me to advertisements. Advertisements give you a peek into what the country is buying. OTT ads are terrible - constantly selling you fintech apps or credit services you don’t need. But TV advertisements keep you rooted to the grassroots. I found that India still has those ads for prickly heat powder. We still have milk products claiming to provide strength to body and mind while simply being brown (coloured) sugar. Fairness creams continue to sell their products without using the word ‘fair’ – instead resorting to words like ‘glow’, ‘cleaning’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’! Ads give you a break to finish small tasks without the military focus required of OTTs.
One question plagues our entire generation – that of ‘What to watch tonight’. I have solved that with one subscription. I now look forward to going back home after a long day’s work. I check out the listings online, and settle down to watch a trashy movie. When it ends, I switch off the TV and go to sleep without the pressure of having missed out on the latest show that the world is going gaga about.
While the world is gungho about OTTs, a few of us still watch Cable TV. I don’t know if people like us will find Succession, or if it is the Last of Us. But we sleep more peacefully with the knowledge that tomorrow, cable TV will throw up more surprises amidst ads for detergent, fairness creams, and milk powders. There will be no hashtags to keep track of. But there will always be Dharmendra belting a poor villain into oblivion.
(The writer’s views are his own)