Hyderabad, April 05: The marriage of a celebrity is always the first headline and when a celebrity couple decides to tie the knot, the news becomes much bigger. But the marriage of Indian Tennis star Sania Mirza with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Mallik is giving an overdose of news-peg to the entire media, especially the national news channels.
When the news of the celebrity couple’s proposed marriage broke last week, all the national channels started dedicating almost half of their bulletin’s to cover different aspects. But the Ayesha Siddiqui’s controversy added so much of spice to the event that the channels are willing to spend lakhs of rupees to ensure best coverage.
There is so much to cover. They are raising and themselves answering several interesting questions like Will it improve the Indo-Pak relations? Will Sania play for Pakistan? Why Shiv Sena supremo is against the marriage? Should BJP oppose the marriage? And so on.
Ayesha Siddiqui’s controversy added more spice to the story. Since Saturday, the channels have shown nothing but the Shoaib-Ayesha controversy. A 15-20 seconds same visual was shown by all the channels with almost everyone having the tag ‘exclusive’. The same 15-20 seconds visuals were repeated so many times that it started infecting the eyes.
All channels are literally at war with each other to get ‘exclusive’ footage of Sania and Shoaib; ‘exclusive’ interviews with Ayesha and her family; ‘exclusive’ sound-bytes of Shoaib, Sania and their family members and ‘exclusive’ quotes from the police officials on the case filed by Ayesha.
In addition to the local teams, almost all the national channels have sent 3 to 4 teams from other bureaus to Hyderabad. Presently, Outdoor Broadcasting (OB) vans have been permanently parked near Sania Mirza and Ayesha Siddiqui’s residences.
Reporters and cameramen are working round the clock to ensure that they do not miss a single visual of the star couple. From Monday onwards, Banjara Hills police station, where a case has been registered against Shoaib Mallik on Ayesha’s complaint, will become another venue where reporters and cameramen will be deployed in large numbers.
Get ready to watch these stories or interviews on the national channels from Monday interview with senior police officials and lawyers on Shoaib’s case; reaction from religious leaders; legal experts and common people; interviews of Sania’s designer; chef; Qazi; Taj Krishna’s staff; security guards; travel agents on where the couple will go for honeymoon and the list is endless. For the next 10 days, the channels will dedicate their news bulletins to the star couple.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Dr.K.Rosaiah should give a special gift to Sania and Shoaib on their marriage, especially for their timing. They saved him from media criticism over his failure to prevent communal riots in Hyderabad.
They stole the media space to such an extent that all the channels didn’t even realise that more than half of Hyderabad was under curfew. The channels ignored the death of two innocent people in the riots. Two other patients died as they could not reach the hospital on time due to curfew. About 50 people, injured in stone pelting and stabbing, are still undergoing treatment in hospitals.
Lakhs of people are starving due to continued curfew since one week. Traders are selling essential commodities at double or triple rates during curfew relaxation hours. Nobody noticed that the government has not yet announced its customary ex-gratia amount for the dead and injured.
Of course, the news channels won’t get any TRPs if they report these issues, because they are about common people. The channels want common people to stay in front of idiot box watching celebrity marriages. But they want don’t the same common man to look into the camera and speak about his problems. (What a shameless profession I belong to!)
However, keep watching the national channels to know everything about Sania, Shoaib and Ayesha controversy for the next 10 days.
-Agencies