Monday, January 28, 2008

Popular media

Cinema

Main article: Cinema of India

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based film industry in India. Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is considered to be the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and number of tickets sold.

Besides the commercial films, India has also produced many critically acclaimed cinema-makers like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli, Shekhar Kapoor, Ashutosh Gwarikar Mani Ratnam, G. Aravindan etc. (See Indian film directors). In fact, with the opening up of the economy in the recent years and consequent exposure to world cinema, audience tastes have been changing. Indian commercial movies have also started following authentic, real world themes with a lower amount of melodrama & some do not even contain songs. In addition, multiplexes have mushroomed in most cities, changing the revenue patterns & allowing film makers greater liberty & scope for executing bold & innovative ideas which would not have been possible even a decade ago.

Television

Main article: Television in India

Indian television started off in 1959 in New Delhi with tests for educational telecasts.[14] Indian small screen programming started off in the mid 1970s. At that time there was only one national channel Doordarshan, which was government owned. 1982 saw d revolution in TV programming in India, with the New Delhi Asian games, India saw the colour version of TV, that year. The Ramayana and Mahabharat were some among the popular television series produced. By the late 1980s more and more people started to own television sets. Though there was a single channel, television programming had reached saturation. Hence the government opened up another channel which had part national programming and part regional. This channel was known as DD 2 later DD Metro. Both channels were broadcasted terrestrially.

In 1991, the government liberated its markets, opening them up to cable television. Since then, there has been a spurt in the number of channels available. Today, Indian silver screen is a huge industry by itself, and has thousands of programmes in all the states of India. The small screen has produced numerous celebrities of their own kind some even attaining national fame for themselves. TV soaps are extremely popular with housewives as well as working women, and even men of all kinds. Some small time actors have made it big in Bollywood. Indian TV has evolved to be similar to Western TV, including stations such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and MTV India.

See also: List of Indian television stations

Radio

Radio broadcasting began in India in 1927, with two privately owned transmitters at Mumbai and Calcutta. These were nationalised in 1930 and operated under the name "Indian Broadcasting Service" until 1936, when it was renamed All India Radio (AIR). Although officially renamed again to Akashwani in 1957, it is still popularly known as All India Radio. All India Radio is a division of Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India), an autonomous corporation of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. It is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster.Indian women are effected by daily serials.Since the turn of the 20th century, radio frequencies in India have been aggressively opened up to broadcasters on the FM and AM bands, although such service has been mostly limited to the metropolitan areas. Cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, and many others have many private FM channels to broadcast popular Hindi and English music, although they are still not allowed to broadcast news like Akashwani does. Recently World Space launched the country's first satellite radio service.