Someone among us said, “We need an independent television channel that simply promotes innovation,” and the rest of the group saw it as a brilliant idea, but felt this was never going to happen.

This ‘someone’ is my alter-ego, and the ‘rest’ an assumption of a large number of fellow youngsters who, I believe, must be sharing the same feelings.

I don’t have any issue with the vast number of reality shows that are around, serials that thrive because there are thousands of mythological stories around, and because the viewership for the sob-stories on the suffering-yet-brave and really beautiful woman protagonist never goes down.

Let anyone with the smartness make money. But, why a mediocre stuff is passed on as something awesome?

Viewers see television as an epitome of virtue. Which is why, what television offers them is a product crafted with ultimate perfection and care.

So, when a sub-standard work is projected as a really good one, it tends to make the viewer think that it really is good. Being an artist, I feel really bad about this.

The thought that triggered this subtle frustration is a programme I saw some months back. Its main attraction was the presence of a young and prominent musician. He is a skilled player but not really talented. He has been simply over-hyped by the media.

This is a dangerous situation — of an artist being put in an elevated state and his real image getting masked by feeble pretensions and ego.

He performed as a guest and musicians must have understood he did it really bad. But the judges (all prominent guys in the mallu world) kept saying, “Oh, you are just remarkable, totally out of the world”… and blah blah blahhh!

These guys knew precisely that it was not so. But they lied and tried making viewers fools, so that they can move on!

The writer is a drummer with Kochi-based band Kaav