They appear in shows looking like Christmas trees. But don’t shine like them. Almost all actors on the small screen end up looking like clones of each other. They sleepwalk in and out of scenes. While the women concentrate on holding their <em>zardosi sari pallu</em>s in the picture perfect way the men ‘emote’ with their rippling muscles. By God, the amount of time they spend in trying to look good, if they had invested the same in learning the craft the quality of television would be so much better.

It is indeed a tough job to be in the shoes of a programming head, for that matter in recent times, the shoe pinches even the channel’s marketing head. More so, when the channel is sliding down and has to do all it can to beat competition. Each time a new show is announced one tries to figure out the math that has probably gone into it to get it right. Sure, they get it wrong too but then, who except a few, have always got their math right?