Crowning moments of the great TV rat race

Rohit Bansal

* Sunday’s saturated coverage on TV left ample scope for Gen. Musharraf to show off his sartorial tastes. As soon as he got out of his Mercedes to shake hands with the PM, Star, Zee and Aaj Tak anchors lost no time getting fixated to his “body language” and what it augured. Aaj Tak thought he was being casual, but analyst Maroof Raza on Zee thought the general is an expert on “how to dress for the occasion”. Someone helpfully “disclosed” that the Indian side had asked the Pakistanis to dress casually! And that gave room to Star’s expert Kanti Bajpai to take a jibe at our bureaucrats, “it was too hard for them not being in suits”. Gen Musharraf had changed to his third attire of the day, not to miss the open shirt-button at the Taj, when pictures last came in!

* Zee had a moment of glory when I&B minister Sushma Swaraj was at its Agra studios when the first pictures of Gen Musharraf came in the morning. Anchor Sanjay Pugalia hesitantly interrupted her by commenting on the General’s video picture. Ms Swaraj joined in sportingly and started pointing out just how the “body language is positive” and “this is a good sign to start on”. Later, Zee anchors in Delhi spent considerable energy calling it “running commentary by the minister”, “which is not there on any channel”....and “a media coup”.

* Similar efforts to give that unique twist got Aaj Tak’s Prabhu Chawla into an amusing spat with Ms Swaraj (on her own sartorial binge, a chocolate sari, mind you, after donning green at Zee just a few minutes back). Right since morning Aaj Tak’s Dibang had been giving the Summit a spin of cricket: “kaisi pitch hai, kya aaj ball swing hogi, unke paas maahir bowler hein, hamaare ballebaaz kaise hein,” etc. But when Mr Chawla tried to york Ms Swaraj on whether there is some “match fixing”, she hit him hard with a blunt, “stop getting trivial”. The two sparred for several minutes before Mr Chawla called time out.

* On Star News there was considerable interest on which language the two leaders would have used in their 1 hour 45 minute meeting. Anchor Prannoy Roy suggested that Mr Vajpayee’s “Sanskritised Hindi” might have been tough for Gen Musharraf. And Ms Sushma (that’s right, she had studio hopped to NDTV by then!) indulgently chided him for not knowing that “Vajpayee Saheb speaks such excellent Hindustani...which is more Urdu...so easy for Musharraf Saheb...akhir woh Dilli ke rehne wale hein”, and added, “yeh to tum ho Prannoy ki Star TV mein English lagaye rehte ho”. Mr Roy argued he is comfortable in Bengali instead. It helped when Star cut in to a field interview with the bureau chief of Chinese radio, who we were told spoke mandarin and Hindi, “but no English”, and everyone burst out laughing.

* A huge Pakistani contingent of “independent thinkers” remained permanent features of Star’s coverage, sabre rattling on the ‘K’ agenda and “you Indians” so consistently and effectively right through the day that anchor Prannoy Roy got down to asking them “what would it take to make Pakistan happy”, a far cry from India’s stated position of non-negotiability.

* CNN and the BBC were present in large contingents. But BBC marred its coverage showing Hurriyat’s Mirwaiz Omar Farooq with Karan Thapar, a recording held quite clearly before high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi’s tea party on Saturday. Mirwaiz kept referring to meetings “today” and how “we have been given an exclusive audience by President Musharraf” and how “(JKLF’s) Yaseen Malik will support our discussions”. Late tuners wondered for several minutes if this was breaking news and, in fact, another invitation to the Hurriyat no one knew about.

* The number of cameras and OBs mainstream Indian channels pumped in was clearly unprecedented. Zee apparently had 8 cameras in Agra and one OB, Aaj Tak had 12 teams and two OBs. The extra OB allowed Aaj Tak the luxury of trailing Begum Musharraf to Fatehpur Sikri.

* At least one media planner wondered what the ratings of Amitabh Bachchan’s KBC Junior would like against the Vajpayee-Musharraf combine this Sunday!