'The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news, we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were….' David Brinkley, American television newscaster.

I miss Laloo…. Pardon me if this piece may read as somewhat distracted. It's not only because I am missing Laloo from the depths of my couch potato soul. It's also because I am writing this while simultaneously surfing four news channels. All covering Rakhi Sawant who has fallen into a 40-feet deep borewell which Mika had cunningly dug under the stage on which she was performing in Bhatinda. And, even as we speak, there is live footage of Rakhi taking off her…I don't really know what to call it because it's so little that it defies description. Anyway, Rakhi has just spoken and wants all of India to know that she's only taking it off because....

I'm sorry. Her explanation has been drowned out by the noise of the fight that has just broken out between Mika and one of the news channel's anchors as to who has the first right to convert this footage into a new music video which will be called…Jungli Kabootar because that is what Rakhi actually called Mika. (For the uninitiated, that is equivalent to calling someone a stinky warthog with vomit green warts.) Live. On Aaj Tak. It was a few days after Rakhi had demanded a public apology from Mika for - is the word that I am looking for 'kissing' - her at his happy-birthday-to-me party. Naturally, Mika refused, as any self-respecting Pind-ka-lassi-piya-hua-mard-ka-baccha would have. As fur, feathers and allegations flew fast and thick, aided and abetted by the media (print and television) doing their bit to keep things on the boil, Aaj Tak invited the two parties to come on air and….Well, I don't really know why. Kiss and make up maybe?

Besides, this was Breaking News material of national importance. Anyway, it was riveting stuff. There was Rakhi, barely recognisable because her hair wasn't orang-utan orange and she was dressed in what you and I refer to as clothes. Mika was only a voice-over. (Maybe, he's the shy sort, poor boy, not wanting to share the same TV space with the lady whose throat he had recently tried to climb down.) Soon, things began to heat up, voices began to get raised and before you could say 'Chumma de de', Mika was telling Rakhi that it was time she 'sudhro-ed' and bought herself some clothes. Because had she looked at herself lately in the mirror? (Intelligent boy, this Mika…took the words right out of our mouths.) To which Rakhi - now madder than a wet hen with PMS - replied, "Aur tum! Tum kaise dikhte ho?! Jungli kabootar ke jaise!"

For those all-too-brief, delightful moments, I even stopped missing Laloo. I mean, this is what news television should be, isn't it? It's so much more fun than looking at bloody bits of people strewn all over the place who can't talk anyway. Or watching the same tired ol' clutch of celebrity-expert types go yakkity-yak on how dangerous it is or not to drink pesticide-laced cola. I'm thinking it's probably more dangerous to watch yet another discussion about it. Or yet another stretch of blurry footage with incoherent mumbling, supposedly a sting operation of some man telling you that it will cost you four lakhs to get your French poodle (or is it Mexican Chihuahua?) admission into the city's top-notch pooch-manners-training school.

Boring, boring, boring. The real dum in the aloo they never show us. (Or Laloo, for that matter. I miss you, Laloo.) For example, why aren't we seeing all that MMS footage of…let me see now? There was Kareena and that what's-his-name-Kapur boy doing what Mika tried to do with Rakhi. Or that Delhi public schoolboy and girl doing what certainly wasn't being taught in the sex education periods. Or Shakti Kapoor and Aman Verma making offers to ladies that even the Godfather couldn't make. Or that 'sex video' supposedly starring BJP star-on-the-rise general secretary, Sanjay Joshi. Till today, nobody knows what it contained. All we know is that after proclaiming his innocence from the rooftops and 'proving' that the earlier audio tapes did not have his voice, when this CD made the rounds of the BJP and RSS power rooms, Joshi hastily resigned.

Undercover journalism is all very well, but when do we, the public, get to see what happened under the covers? Shouldn't this also be part of the Right to Information Act? After all, did not all of the Free World get to know every graphic detail of what a crucial part cigars and thongs played in the Clinton presidency?

Then there are all those dratted wardrobe malfunction moments…. I have to tell you, people. I was glued to the telly for an entire week (all of the last Fashion Week for that matter), hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Nothing. I finally had to make do with itsy-bitsy pics on the Net - that too with the places where the wardrobe had malfunctioned blurred out. Not fair. I ask you, was American news media as coy about Janet Jackson's booby tryst with destiny?

I miss Laloo…. I don't know about Bihar but the 9 o'clock news without Laloo is like samosa without aloo. It sucks…. I know I should be miffed about the quality of television news coverage supposedly going - as poor lil' Prince did - down the tube. But I'm not, firstly, because I don't watch television news that much any more. And have found that the world doesn't come to an end if I didn't know the exact trajectory path of the third bullet in Pramod Mahajan's liver. Or who does M S Dhoni's hair. Or how many marriages have now ended after the release of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.

Secondly, because I asked myself this question: Is Pamela Anderson sexy 24x7? Of course she is not. Even she has times during the day when things sag and bag and droop. Silicone implants and Botox notwithstanding. Only, we don't see it because we don't see her 24 hours a day. You're thinking, so what's Pamela Anderson got to do with the colour of Prannoy Roy's hair rinse? (Maybe Pamela is going to launch a news channel called the Boob Tube.)

Simply this. It's unrealistic to expect television news to be unflaggingly intelligent and meaningful, 24x7. There just aren't enough scams, item bombs and suicide bombers to go around. Or that many intelligent newscasters. Now, unfortunately, the math of the media business demands that this is how it has to be. That whenever I flop onto my sofa after having sweatily slaved over Chinky-ke-papa-ka dinner, Rakhi is there, demanding an apology from her director for showing footage of her working out her boobs…er, I mean pectorals. Or else I'll go right back to the arms of Tulsi or Parvati or Prerna and so will the advertising budgets. (Ever wondered why you only see ads for cement, pump sets and MDH Masala on the news channels?) And what with FTV back on air and porn still free on the internet, running news channels ain't a cakewalk…. So these are forced to become a circus, ready with the next freak show to grab the remaining one-second crumb of our attention as we skippety-hop across 64 channels and our lives.

In 1976, Peter Finch starred in a film called Network as a well-known newscaster who loses his 25-year job as anchorman because he is growing old and the ratings are falling. Unable to digest this, he announces in his next broadcast, I'm going to blow my brains out right on this programme a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. When the ratings indeed threaten to go through the roof, programming executive Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) talks the head of the channel into treating it as a 'special event'. Network is a frighteningly prophetic film. If we don't want it to happen, we have to switch off the telly and go back to our lives. And to the days when the news, like breakfast, lunch and dinner, got served for about 30 minutes just three times a day.

Many years ago, the host of one of Zee TV's super hit game shows decided to quit the show and take a shot at Hindi films - as the villain in the then super hit director's forthcoming film. One of the first things he did was to hire a secretary-publicist. Within a few days of being hired, the secretary-publicist came to brief him with a list of things that he had planned for him: one brawl in a high-profile bar with the hero of the film, two allegations that he was having an affair with the heroine of the film and/or that a junior artist had accused him of trying to molest her. And one 'strong rumour' that he got the role film because his aunt was the ex-mistress of an underworld don's uncle's third cousin. At the soon-to-be Mogambo's outraged reaction, the publicist just shrugged and said, "Is line mein rehna hai toh yeh sab karna padega...."