Doordarshan and Olympics

Was watching the live telecast of the athletic events at Olympics 2008 on Doordarshan. The relay is pathetic. No postcard finishes for us, its only blurry, delayed images. The picture quality seems to have hardly changed since the days of Buniyaad in 1987.

The commentary leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least.
When a national anthem was being played and some of the players stood still as a mark of respect, all our bewildered commentator could utter was "That was a prize ceremony!!!"...yeah man...thanks for letting me know, God knows what I would have thought of it otherwise!
And then of course, there was the instance of the Mr. Commentator (Mr. C) who started talking on his cell (on air...must be "my life is an open book" types), most probably to his director. Mr. Director wanted Mr C to commentate a particular sport and after haggling over it for a while, our brilliant Mr. C realized that he was after all commentating the game in question!

It is just DD's monopoly on the telecast of the ongoing Olympic events in India that makes me rest my remote on channel no 24 for a few minutes.
It is the same DD, that opened up the world for us, gave us "Mile Sur Mera Tumhara...", Ramayan, Surabhi and Buniyaad, made our Sundays "SUNDAY's" with Grimms Fairy Tales, made Salma Sultan my favourite news reader and made Rangoli and Chitrahaar my window to Bollywood

With amazing reach deep into the rural hinterlands and its singular monopoly till the 90's, it has done little (or nothing) to keep up with the changing times :(

What with all the hype about India bidding to host the Olympics in 2016, were they to host it, I sure hope they are not planning to telecast it on DD!

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