By A Correspondent [Updated]
[please read: https://www.mxmindia.com/2021/08/barc-makes-it-official-sunil-lulla-quits-nakul-chopra-to-take-charge-as-ceo-wef-aug-25/]
In July this year, a not-so-little birdie told us that winds of change could be blowing soon in A&M-land. Some tangible movements were seen in the headquarters of one of the world’s largest television audience measurement bodies.
This was suitably denied, and scoffed at. But we’ve seen such responses before. When the denial is a scoff, matlab, there is some black in the doll (ugh, dal mein kuch kaala hai!)
So we stayed put, until a platform scooped the news on Thursday evening. It was more than just breaking khabar, it was laced with nuggets that presented the captain in rather poor light. But that’s possibly in keeping with what it (the platform) has done in the past, so we weren’t surprised, although saddened. If an offering is equally brutal to one and all, it’s fine. But when it gets selective, there is an unnecessary reason to attribute motives.
But the hows and whys of the development aren’t the mainstay of this story. It just gave us an opportunity to drive home a concern.
There are concerns. Who now will captain the ship?
Who from the business is happy to increase her/his stress levels? Perhaps even start popping tranquilisers. Or get sugar levels astray. Whatever.
Captaining a media audience measurement body in India is the world’s most thankless job. Note: not one of the most. It’s by far the worst. Worser, if there is such a word, than being the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai. Try your utmost, the city will flood every year. You get the drift?
While media measurement gets hit always, what happens in television is worse. It required a former captain of his tam, er, time, to be doing 56 sit-ups to build his endurance. Another former captain took to fast cars and gizmos to take his mind off. A recent one is a marathoner, and been, as they say, a lambi race ka ghoda. But the racetrack is full of thorns. It’s worse than the dirt tracks caused by the Mumbai rains.
Heck, let’s not digress.
The problem with the measurement body is that there is a tribe within which ought not to be rated so regularly, insists on doing so. Get 12-and-a-half more people to watch it in a certain geography, and you could tilt the balance in statistical analyses. So what do you do? Game the system.
But this tribe has tightened the noose (again, no pun intended) on the business. And although it contributes just about 10 per cent to the coffers, it results in 90 per cent of the stress. The 90-10 principle.
Then there are assorted corruption charges. Some proven, and a countless hot on the rumour circuit. Unproven, but not unimaginable.
All and sundry attempt to cajole and bamboozle the captain and his/her team. Only conversations with some get sadly leaked in public. Others don’t. It’s gotten so bad that even though the ‘discreditors’ have been discredited, the discredited stay discredited.
Back to the captain of the ship. It’s confirmed, he has opted out. Setting sail to something not-so-dramatically different soon. Let’s say, hypothetically, on a Thursday.
And who will take controls. There’s no clear co-captain currently. There’s no deputy captain. The grapevine tells us that a former super-captain who also headed the body of one of the stakeholders may well hold interim charge. He’s nice man too. We know it. We’ve fought with him, but we’ve turned friends. And when he was super-captain, we heard he was a great guy. Just. And in a way he knows the system inside-out. Clearly not an outlier. [we were proved wrong here. he’s appointed full-time captain]
But there are other concerns. It’s not the question of whether the industry deserves the measurement body, but is there a concerted effort to get rid of it? Perhaps there is. Perhaps there isn’t.
We don’t know. But our heart bleeds. Too much bark, bite and backstabbing. Time that someone calls the bluff. Time that there’s some soulsearching. Atma chintan!
Many of the law-enforcers are said to have failings, but do we do away with them? Do we make life this miserable that the boss opts out?
Meanwhile, we at MxM shouldn’t be complaining. Doom in the world outside rings music to the newsperson’s ears. Sadly our ears too.
Important: Any resemblance to any living and non-living objects, organisations and people (save MxM) is purely coincidental