Celebrity Quickies - the next media run!
PAGE 3 is now low-class.The media have raised celebrity stakes to Page 1 or Breaking News. The media coverage of the Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai alliance, the Bachchan family's pilgrimages to temples, Shilpa Shetty's scandal in the UK, and Rakhi Sawant's tantrums have put the pressure on socialites to devise new ideas to grab the attention of reporters and photographers.
Their publicists will have to hire film scriptwriters and thriller novelists to generate bestseller ideas. There might even be popular media competitions for weird ideas which will grab Page 1 and Breaking News space. Boom times are ahead for innovative media enterprises.
Since I will never make it to Page 3, let alone Page 1 or Breaking News, I've decided to generate ideas instead. If they work, I may shine in reflected glory.
I start with the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding. They will be on show until the door of the honeymoon suite closes behind them. Then there will be silence until they emerge again after having lost their metaphorical virginity. This aspect of media coverage is obvious and doesn't require much imagination.
I want to concentrate on the silent period and make it roar globally. Here are some of the ideas. They have not been patented. Instead of the now common term 'Breaking News', I have invented a new term – COMING NEWS.
1. Copied from a foreign film (I forget its title) in which a village is worried because the bell tied under the bed of a newly-married couple does not ring for several days. The village tension mounts, until at last the Event happens and everyone is full of relief and ecstasy.
My idea is to tie a string to the Abhishek-Aishwarya bed. The string is connected to a bell hanging outside the suite. Reporters and cameramen concentrate on the bell. And the whole world knows when and how often it rings.
2. This one applies advanced spy technology. Sound scanners focus on the window of the couple's bed. They pick up the vibrations of the suite's glass windows which are converted into the conversations and sounds occurring in the room. The whole world is kept informed of the couple's words, sighs and moans.
3. A more flashy coverage than the above would be a son-et-lumière (sound and light) show. The bed is electrically connected to gadgets outside. The bed movements are converted into megawatt blasts and lightning flashes. At critical movements the light show will explode into fireworks. There will be global applause.
4. The above on-the-spot techno coverage will be connected to telecom networks so that every mobile phone gets an SMS flash accompanied by an appropriate music blast.
5. With so much world attention focused on the event, even Google Earth might be tempted to participate. Along with giving satellite pictures of the honeymooning couple's bungalow and their antics in the garden or swimming pool, Google could provide radiation pictures which are formed out of aerial body heat scans of the couple. I don't know if such technology, which penetrates walls and ceilings to pick up body heat radiation, is easily available now. But the American CIA will surely have it.
Since I am not a techie, these must be very elementary ideas. But media empires can certainly find techie geniuses who can come up with far superior ones. And with them, grander spectacles than I have offered can be devised.
Entertaining times are ahead, man. I feel sorry for Page 1 couples.
