By Shailesh Kapoor
It’s good to be back after the longest break (a mere three weeks) this column has taken since its start in 2012. In my early years as a media professional, I was trained to think that in this industry, one week is like one month in another industry; there’s just so much action around.
So three weeks should seem like three months, right? Instead, I’m asking: Did I miss anything at all? Nothing that would change the world, but here’s how my catch-up of the last three weeks looked like.
The Rio Agony
We clearly did not have our best Olympic games. With a series of agonising fourth-spot finishes and near-misses, especially in Shooting, India came back home with only two medals, both won within 16 hours of each other, by two women athletes who were not the most likely contenders for winning at the start of the event.
But the media discourse around the Olympics was more about what happened before and after those 16 hours. From the Shobhaa De selfie tweet to the political jostling to “own†PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, we saw two extremes of what ails Indian sports – a lack of public awareness of what it takes to be an athlete, and a systemic rot that holds our athletes back from winning big, respectively.
The GEC Struggle
You don’t miss anything if you take a break from the GECs these days. The genre continues to lose viewership since January, dropping almost 5% in the last one week itself. When a film premiere of a mid-range film (Baaghi) outscores top fiction and non-fiction shows, you know all is not right. A new show called Brahmarakshak opened very well to further perpetuate the media stereotype that fantasy fiction is all Indian viewers want to watch these days.
Balika Vadhu ended and Diya Aur Baati Hum is ending soon. Even as they leave their legacy, we are left wondering: Is new legacy being created?
The Caribbean Chapter
The West Indies Test series ended with a damp squib and a bit of a farce in the fourth Test. India did well enough to win the series 2-0, and the two T20s in Florida this weekend will bring the focus back from the Olympics to cricket. For the next four years.
The Tapes That Are Watermarked
Last night was one of the more substantive editions of The Newshour. Times Now got hold of about four hours of audio footage (that they claimed they have audio watermarked!) on telephonic conversations that Rahul Mukerjea had with Peter and Indrani Mukerjea over a few weeks since the ‘disappearance’ of Sheena Bora. Some of these phone calls were played out last night, and the rest are lined up for today. It was compelling viewing, and I have to confess it simplified the case considerably for a viewer, with primary evidence on display. Arnab Goswami is often accused of running his own courtroom every night, but with hard evidence on display, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea last night!