a ramayana on air. 143
an unexpected windfall—the best example is Jai Santoshi Ma (1975), which, through
presenting a new goddess whose time had clearly come, became a runaway hit with
women and one of the highest-grossing films of the period—the genre as a whole
has seemed riskier than most formulas. Although an audience for such films obvi-
ously existed, it was also evident that it was not the regular film-going crowd of
young urban males at whom the majority of releases were targeted.
The advent of television did not initially create conditions favorable to the
screening of religious narrative. During the 1960s and early 1970s, television sets in
India served principally as technological novelties to adorn upper-class sitting
rooms, where they provided, for a few hazy hours each night, a droning rendition
of the day’s news (read in Sanskritized Hindi by a newscaster who always looked
directly into the camera—a sort of All-India Radio with a face) and drably edify-
ing cultural programming. The 1970s saw a steady increase in the number of sets
and transmission centers, and the advent of color programming, yet the standard
audience complaint about Doordarshan remained that it was overwhelmingly dull.
The addition of a weekly program of song and dance clips from hit movies (Chi-
trahaar, which immediately became the most popular program on television) and of
a Sunday afternoon feature film sparked viewer interest but also confirmed that the
appeal of television was largely as an adjunct to the existing film industry, and that
the distinctive potential of the small screen had yet to be realized.
In the early 1980s, two related developments transformed Doordarshan: the ad-
vent of commercials and the commissioning of serialized dramas from independ-
ent studios. Maintaining the national network as a noncommercial preserve had
proved a costly proposition and powerful private-sector interests were eager to pay
to reach consumers over the airwaves. The decision to accept commercials in turn
forced the network to provide more varied and entertaining fare, since sponsors re-
quired assurance that audiences would indeed be watching. The new commercials
themselves were highly entertaining: financed with high budgets and conceived by
advertising directors who kept up with the latest American trends, they burst on the
screen in fifteen-minute blocks, sparkling with humor, catchy music, and dazzling
special effects, but their glossy look only made the regular programming appear
more tired in comparison.
At the same time, Doordarshan began to face competition from videocassette
recorders and a burgeoning market in rental movies, which gave viewers the option
of switching off the state-controlled channel in favor of taped programs of their
choice. The impact of the VCR on Indian culture during the last decade warrants
closer examination—it has, for one thing, given Bombay films the truly mass expo-