Prachi Desai : TV is a regressive medium
She made it big with television, but actor Prachi Desai does not approve of how the medium has become today and feels that it is regressive in nature. “I think, I was a part of TV in a more fortunate time. Even though my story was of a girl being in love with an older man, it was a slightly modern drama as compared to what it is right now. It is extremely regressive,” says the actor who has since graduated to the big screen.
Before venturing into movies with the 2008 hit Rock On!!, she featured as Bani Walia in hit show Kasamh Se in 2006. “You feel that everyone is doing the same thing and copying each other. When I was in TV, there were so many different stories. I think that stage has gone,” she said. An Ekta Kapoor discovery, Prachi has been part of films like Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai and Bol Bachchan.
Asked if she would go back to doing TV, Prachi said, “If a very interesting phase on Indian TV comes where we have short stories and films, then why not? At the end of the day, you are an actor and the medium doesn’t matter,” she said. However, she can’t think of doing a daily soap. “At least not right now. It’s a decision I made when I did Rock On!!,” the 24-year-old shared.
Television in India
The television industry in India is very diverse and produces thousands of programs in many of India’s official languages. More than half of all Indian households own a television. As of 2016, the country had over 857 channels of which 184 were pay channels.
In January 1950, The Indian Express reported that a television was put up for demonstration at an exhibition in the Teynampet locality of Madras (now Chennai) by B. Sivakumaran, a student of electrical engineering. A letter was scanned and its image displayed on a cathode ray tube screen. The report said that “it may be this is not the whole of television but it is certainly the most significant link in the system” and added that the demonstration of the sort could be the “first in India”.
IANS – February 15, 2013
