Telugu TV artists and technicians in Andhra Pradesh are demanding that regional entertainment channels should stop airing dubbed serials as they are deprived of work.
The artists and technicians have held protests like fasts in support of their cause and the issue took a serious turn when some of them allegedly attacked the office of a popular Telugu entertainment channel a few days ago.
The protesters alleged that the channel did not pay heed to their demand, and the attackers ended up behind bars over the incident.
The complaint of the TV artistes is that the dubbed serials like 'Balika Vadhu' (originally made in Hindi), which have become hugely popular with the audience, have thrown them out of work as not many serials are made in Telugu.
"Scores of TV artists, producers and others have lost their livelihood due to the onslaught of dubbed serials. We have been protesting against this, but nothing concrete has come for us so far," Suresh, a leader of the TV artists association, said.
As the artists held sit-ins, with one of them undertaking an indefinite fast, some channels have responded positively and promised to encourage local soaps, but many channels still continue to show dubbed ones, the artists alleged.
Besides rendering the local artists and technicians jobless, the dubbed serials also hurt local language and culture, they asserted.
