Britannia no longer rules the waves. As the last governor, Chris Patten, watched from Her Majesty's yacht, the Britannia glided "away from the glass canyon of Hong Kong" for the last time. Earlier, during the farewell ceremony at the Tamar Naval Base, TV cameras captured the essence of the change: there hung over the city a thick layer of black cloud, then a lighter, lower layer and, finally, a haze through which you could discern the silhouettes of skyscrapers lashed by the rain, lapped by grey waters. It was a black and white photograph fading slowly into history.

The `handover', `the return', `the reversion' of "this dot on the edge of China" to the mainland was the ideal TV event. It had everything: pageantry in the march pasts, spectacle in the dances, pomp and grandeur in the lowering of the British flag, solemnity in the handing over ceremony, sentiment in the farewell embraces, celebration in the fireworks that lit up the Hong Kong and Beijing skylines... and lastly, a hero.

The BBC called him "a great man of the people" though he said he was quite happy to be Chris Patten. He stood there after his goodbye speech, acknowledging the ovation like a film star who'd just been awarded a life time Oscar. He compressed his lips to suppress tears, arms akimbo. Then he bowed his head, sank into his seat, the sadness threatening to tremble his stiff upper lip.

So, it would seem that distance does make the heart less fonder: where BBC was warm with emotion, CNN, CNBC looked at the transfer of power coolly, dispassionately. BBC was too close to the event, too overcome by the end of empire, too preoccupied with the British legacy. It concentrated on Patten and as Lady Thatcher put it, "the Bri-tish rule of law, the Bri-tish sense of equity and fair play". It took Rupert Murdoch's SKY News (co-opted onto STAR News) to explain that the applause at midnight was for the Chinese, not the British.

CNN and CNBC were far superior in commentary and reviews. CNBC had a clock ticking away the seconds to midnight; it also had a simulcast from Beijing and Honk Kong, juxtaposing joy with sadness. And its picture quality was ever so sharp. The live telecasts were a great gift. Too long in the telling, but history is a bit like that. If anything, the Hong Kong Handover justified the existence of current affairs channels. Just as the telecast of Wimbledon justifies sports channels. Content counts. That's what is so wrong with our Broadcast Bill. You might be tempted to skip this part. Please don't: so far, the Bill appears to be the exclusive preserve of the Select Parliamentary Committee, the I&B Ministry, channel executives and some media watchers. Last week, DD invited viewers to contact the Lok Sabha Secretariat if they wished to discuss the Bill with the Select Committee. Sheer foolishness. How many viewers are aware of the Broadcast Bill? How many know what it says or even understand its clauses? Instead of extending invitations, DD should initiate prime time debates on the Bill clearly explaining its provisions and their implications. It should be incumbent on private channels to follow suit. And instead of the same officials, ex-officials and media experts, the discussions should be thrown open to include many, many more shades of opinion. Everyone watches TV; therefore, everyone has an opinion on it. Problem is, nobody is asking.

That brings us back to the problem with the Bill: it's almost wordless on the subject of content. And those provisions which would affect content, at least tangentially, are left unexplained. For example, cross media restrictions, licenses in only one broadcasting mode per broadcaster, are efforts, however unrealistic or inadequate, to avoid monopolies and increase plurality of choices in channels and ownership.

However, viewers don't watch channels, they watch serials, documentaries, movies, music videos, news... So the Bill should aim to ensure variety and diversity in programming. It should address the classic communication dilemma: what kinds of programme, when, why and for whom? Television is market-driven but channels can offer programmes catering to the tastes of the minority as much as the majority. The Bill, could, therefore, force license holders to devote a certain percentage of TV time to public service broadcasts, children, women, sports -- even minimum Indian content, if we're really scared by foreign culture-vultures...

Currently, Indian TV channels are dominated by films, film-based shows and serials. The Bill can change that.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.