On November 22, I addressed my column in The Pioneer to self-regulation bodies in the media space. I argued that via Colors, a fairly respectable TV channel, pornstar Sunny Leone is being heavily cross-promoted across the internet, mobile applications and the social media space. I did name Press Council chief Markandey Katju and News Broadcasting Standards Authority chairman JS Verma. But I realised that recourse, if at all, lay with Justice AP Shah, a former chief justice of Delhi High Court, who guards the broadcasting contents complaints council (BCCC), where he and a panel of 12 other notables shoulder societal responsibility towards non-news TV (IBF) channels.
Before I realised it, I found RTI activist Devashish Bhattacharya in my office impleading himself. Dev’s complaint of November 24 has been finally heard by BCCC, but exactly a month after its filing. Meanwhile, Ms Leone’s pornographic site has out-Googled all other sites in India. Her name has been searched several times more than Katrina Kaif and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Magazines such as India Today and newspapers such as Mint have written this as facts. But no one has questioned the cross-promotion!
At the time of going to print, Justice Shah has acceded to Dev’s personal submissions and a horrid set of colour prints establishing just what has been going on. The judge has given Colors three days to stop the cross promotion. No penalties have been ordered for damages already done.
I think such an order means very little. First, waking up after one month has allowed the feisty lady’s site www.sunnyleone.com to be on everyone’s lips. That she was Karen Malhotra for the first 22 years of her life, the eclectic mix of skin and anglicised Punjabi is better known than where our PM was born! Since November 21, she’s been bang inside our bedrooms, at 10.30 pm. Colors does not need cross promotion any more.
I’ve been given justification of why such a weak judgment. After all, on TV, which is what the BCCC regulates, Ms Leone is in ghaghra-choli and is really demure too. No stick-in-the-mud can accuse her even of risqué dialogue: unless you want to load meaning into, “main yahan FUN karna chahti hoon,” with husky Canadian accent et al.
Hello! Did Justice Shah expect Ms Leone to shed her clothes on TV? Is he even aware how big the world’s pornography industry is? There are serious bucks riding on Ms Leone since Penthouse’s Bob Guccione stripped her of that ‘Malhotra’ association and anointed her Pet of the Year 2003. There’s streaming HD content being downloaded from the members area of www.sunnyleone.com (not to mention other such ‘addas’). There’s stuff on her athleticism Indians have smuggle in from her online DVD store. There are mobile downloads, which we have been helpfully informed via her twitter ID @SunnyLeone (which now has 1,10,000 followers; the figure was 84,000 when I first wrote!).
Dev tells me the Justice Shah was indulgent when those assisting him said Colors may have “knowingly or unknowingly” promoted all of the above. Are these guys serious? Or is it because IBF has them only to manage honourable exits for the errant?
I wonder what Colors can actually do after thousands have retweeted that mobile apps can be bought from sunny@nitizart.com? Or what will happen by deleting video that Colors no doubt supplied her for her daily blog?
And what’s the penalty for Viacom affiliate-MTV India (has 3.88 lakh twitter followers on @MTVIndia) for ricocheting Brand Leone and the tweet on November 21 that Dev cited in his complaint: “Normally women kept tissues handy while watching TV soaps; thanks to SunnyLeone, men will keep their tissues handy during BigBoss5.”
To cut the story short, more than a handful of dollars have already changed hands in the inter-related business of five platforms: a) entertainment television, b) paid internet streaming, c) social media, d) mobile apps, and how can I forget, e) mainstream newspapers, and the BCCC has emerged without clothes.
