Friday, March 9

Guess the Celebrity -- Are these channels making fool out of the general Public??

Guess the Celebrity - Unethical TV Programmes
While surfing the TV Channels you will come across a very strange shows where you have to guess a celebrity name. They will show you half of the face of a famous celebrity which anybody under the earth can guess. The anchors with the fine gift of gab will inspire and motivate you to call the number given on the screen to guess the name of the celebrity. Even a child less than 10 years of age knows the name of the celebrity. Sometimes it is Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, or Dhoni or Aamir Khan.

The anchor speaks non stop and lure the general public to call and identify the celebrity. The number where you have to call is given in bold letters on the screen of the TV but are you aware that the call charges for these calls is Rs 12 per minute. The call rates are written in a small letters which are not even visible with the naked eye.

As soon as you dial that number your meter starts. You will be put on hold and will be on hold for ever because you will never be connetced to the anchor.

God knows who are the people who get the opportunity to give answers and to everybody's surpeise the person will always give a wrong answer and the anchor will prompt you to call and win a certain prize money by giving the right answer.

If the celebrity is Dhoni, number of people who are connected will give the answer like Bhajji, Yuvraj, Shreesanth, Dravid, etc but not the right answer which is so obvious. Why??

As a matter of fact this is a mere revenue generation programme introduced by the channels. They are simply making fool out of the innocent public. Just sample this. I saw a programme where they were asking to identify the celebrity who was none other than Salman Khan. Even my small kid identified him as a hero of Body Guard movie. I knew they are making fool but I dialled the number. They put me on hold for almost 10 minutes. Rs 120 were deducted from my account but the people who were giving the answers were giving all the names but not Salman Khan.

The programme was run for 10 minutes, there was no winner and then they changed the celebrity. Tihis time it was Shahrukh and Preity Zinta again very easy to guess. It again continued for 10-15 minutes with no winner.

If we assume that in the country of 120 crore people of 12000 people dialled the number to guess the celebrity, means 12000@Rs 12 per minute = 144000. That means if the programme runs for 30 minutes then the revenue would be about Rs 43 Lacs per half an hour and approximately a 86 Lacs per hour.

Shall the government of India allow such channels and programmes to run?? Is it ethical on the part of channels to make fool of people by showing such programmes.

Is there any RTI for such channels so that we can ask them to give the details of the callers who are calling and giving the wrong answers??



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