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Pitching in on time
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It seems to be everyone's `cup' of opportunity. Not left behind to cash in on the mood are the various talk shows on cricket vying to capture TV viewers' attention.
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CRICKET ALMOST brings things to a standstill in this country. Leading sports channels have roped in most of the prominent former cricketers. That leaves the regional channels with little choice.
This year, it is the humourists who are hosting cricket-based talk shows in the regional channels, which have been allotted prime-time slots.
Bassky has written more than 13000 jokes for Ananda Vikatan since he was prompted by cartoonist Madan to write about 10 years ago. He enjoys being mocked at as much as he enjoys mocking others. His programme, Hari Giri Assembly on Jaya TV has completed nearly 700 shows and is still going strong. But his assembly is not just restricted to the confines of the studio. He convenes it even in the college functions he attends. Bassky is the only anchor hosting two talk shows everyday, including the programme on World Cup. His programme, Poova-thalaiya is being aired on Jaya TV at 7 p.m. The Chaplinesque exterior of Bassky conceals his shrewd cricketing brain. A leg spinner and middle-order batsman, he has represented south zone school team, south zone university team, Tamil Nadu under-22 team and Indian Overseas Bank team. He has played alongside former Indian cricketers Azharuddin and Ravi Shastri. In his programme, he forecasts the performance of the various teams, analyses the game and the gameplan and also comes up with cheeky one-liners in the Bouncer segment of his programme. Cricketers V.V. Kumar, V. Sivaramakrishnan, T.E. Srinivasan and Sunil Subramaniam have shared their opinions in the programme. "My idea was to make a programme which is more interesting than the game. We have tried to mix humour and information. The results are exceptional. "I learnt that several women prefer watching our programme over serials," says Bassky. But Bassky's passion for cricket does not stop with the end of his dial-in show. His mobile keeps buzzing till he retires to bed.
After hosting the successful talk show "Nayandi Darbar" for almost three years, Yuhi Sethu made a foray into films. Last year was a memorable one for this gold medallist in direction from the Film Institute. His acting prowess was appreciated in the movies "Panchathantiram" and "Ramana". "Villain", a movie written by him for filmstar Ajit also did good business. This year, he is planning to write and direct a Tamil film and a desi English film. In the meantime, he is hosting the show on World Cup. Yuhi has been focusing on the human and humourous aspects of cricket in his programme, "Yuhiyuden World Cup" being aired on Star Vijay till mid April at 9. 30 pm. "My programme is an effort to view cricket objectively without all the emotions attached to it. I try to provide a lot of inputs about the places where it is being played and take a dig at people associated with it," he says. Yuhi roped in tourists from Holland, Denmark and Britain to add to the sex appeal in his title song. Yuhi Sethu's programme is full of wisecracks and he has a team of three writers providing him with inputs for the programme. The programme also has outdoor shoots. "Actors and actresses release albums for our cricketers but nobody bothers about the hundreds of soldiers dying everyday in Kashmir. A soldier's family is given about Rs. 2 lakhs for laying down his life for the country while the 12th man in the Indian team earns the same amount for watching the game from the pavilion," he says. Yuhi is also against all the hype that the game enjoys. Besides, interviewing people associated with cricket, Yuhi mimics well-known personalities, pokes fun at the obsessive Indian cricket fan and relates funny anecdotes.
But what is the secret behind the success of these programmes? Viewership for cricket programmes increases a lot during World Cup, this in turn leads to increase in the advertisement revenue, says V. Chandrasekar, an expert in media marketing.
A. ASHOK
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
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