Can a WOMAN marry a MAMMAL? There is a generic problem here. A woman can marry a man, or may be in sometime another woman! But one of a species cannot marry a family of the animal kind. Therefore, how is it possible that Cricket can wed Entertainment. Following the norms of marriage it should either be Cricket weds Movies, or Sports weds Entertainment. But who cares for the English Language or for Sociology? cerainly not Sony Entertainment Television as long as millions of rupees are raked in in revenues.
But nit-picking is not tonight's focus.
I am bothered about why such cross-species hybridity was necessary. In a panel discussion on NDTV various reasons were sighted - a large number of people objected at players like Virendra Shewag performing for Ads and not in the cricket field. Some others exhibited caution on the fact that it is alright as an advertisement but such arrangements whould not affect the game - that is, cricket should continue to be a sport and not take the shape of entertainment; and the game of cricket should not be adversely altered to soot the needs of the entertainment industry. Sony on its part - and really Mandira Bedi - argued that all that Sony was doing was packaging the show for greater publicity.
But I think that all this debate is actually missing a certain point. Sony has taken on this kind of 'packaging' not in order to experiment on a new advertising stretegy. Sony is doing so to resolve a certain crisis of identity it has. It is a channel which is otherwise a movie channel but shows cricket matches. And that too only live matches which may have high TRPs, and nothing else in sport other than live one day internationals, not even cricket. Sony does not want to invest in a full fledged sports channel. It wants to make a quick and clean profit. It has no committment to cricket. All such talk is only for the ears of people like Barkha Dutt.
Thats all!
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