Category: TV

By Shailesh Kapoor

In the short history of news television in India, there would be very few weeks as bizarre as the one we are currently in. We are in the middle of a full-blown investigation of the Sheena Bora murder case, unfolding in near real-time across news channels. Everything else has to take a backseat then, including the disturbing state of affairs in Gujarat.

It’s understandable that a high profile murder case would generate audience interest, especially when it has elements that point to decadence of values, much like the Aarushi Talwar murder case. I’m all for running a story that the audience want to watch. But is debating a whodunit with half-a-dozen talking heads the best way of reporting a murder case? I’m not too convinced about that.

That Indrani Mukerjea, the principal accused here, has a broadcasting lineage has created that much extra interest in media offices. If you have spent at least three-four years in the media industry, chances are very high that you are within one degree of separation from everyone else in the industry. It’s easy for journalists to find colleagues and ex-colleagues who knew Indrani. But very few like Ravina Raj Kohli have chosen to go on record with their views.

So, we end up with the same generic talking heads that we see all the time when a non-political story gets prime-time coverage. But when you see Rahul Roy as one of them, you know it’s getting really desperate.

Last month, I read Avirook Sen’s book on the Aarushi murder case. Coming from a journalist who followed the case and the trial all the way through (for Mumbai Mirror), and continues to do so even now, the book was an eyeopener in many ways. I have spent a fair share of my primetime viewing on the Aarushi case, but when I read Sen’s book, I realised how little I knew about the case till then.

I then googled a few news channel videos from the day of the verdict, and even found Sen on-air in a couple of them. But he got only about half a minute to speak on about three occasions, and while you sensed in that short time that he was the one who knew the case better than everyone on the panel, including the anchor, you never got to know his point-of-view in that short period of time.

If viewers are interested in a story, investigative journalism of Sen’s quality would engage them a lot more than debates based on half knowledge and conjectures. But then, that requires some effort, doesn’t it? As Sen says in his book, there were several days in the Talwars trial when he was the only journalist at the Ghaziabad court.

Are news channels getting addicted to this easier way out, where debates from the comfort of the studios are the new form of journalism? It would seem so, going by what we see all the time.

One hopes that there are young journalists with fire in their belly wanting to change that perception!

By Shailesh Kapoor

Two strikingly contrasting events highlighted the week that was. On Sunday, the season finale episode of TVF Pitchers went online. During the week that followed, BARC India conducted roadshows to share more information on rural ratings. I have written about both these topics here over the last few weeks, but their proximity in time is fascinating, even though it is purely coincidental.

TVF Pitchers achieved a major milestone by featuring on the IMDB Top 250 TV shows charts, where it is currently ranked no. 38, ahead of Friends, Dexter, House Of Cards, and the likes. The show has also received considerable, some would say disproportionate, attention from online media. One such article (by Quartz India) is headlined “How an Internet show on startups delivered a stinging blow to Indian TV”.

TVF Pitchers has watershed qualities to it, a lot more than its predecessor Permanent Roommates. The latter was a romcom, and while it differed from our regular television fare, it was not entirely unfamiliar, especially if you have seen some of the many Bollywood romcoms over the last decade.

But TVF Pitchers enters an area Indian entertainment has never been able to capture authentically – the corporate world. Barring an odd Rocket Singh, most films that have dabbled in this world have caricaturised it, none less than one that was called “Corporate” itself (in which a management trainee gets a cabin to herself, of a size that most CEOs would be envious of). In our TV serials, we hardly see offices anyway, and work is just an excuse to get the men out of the house.

TVF Pitchers manages to bring an authenticity of portrayal, in turn getting the appreciation of a fairly large corporate population of India, across industries. It is corporate but not elitist. It also does not have the shackles of censorship (or self-censorship) around it. It is just intelligent fun.

At about 2 million views per episode, the numbers speak for themselves. But the perspective of mass vs. niche should not be lost here. 2 million is less than 10% of the viewership of an episode of a typical hit Hindi TV show. And these are shows that have hundreds (often thousands) of episodes. We are talking of different degrees altogether.

But the 10% mark may just be the first step in a journey that the ‘parallel TV movement’ may have to make over the next five years. I say “TV” because that’s really what it will compete against. We would need more companies like TVFs and more shows in more genres to grow the market. There are a few others that already exist, but they lack the belief and confidence that shines through TVF Pitchers.

Our mainstream television couldn’t possibly care less about these developments. The rural ratings are round the corner, and the gap between the two worlds is bound to widen. But if the 10% number grows to even 20% over the next year or two, more advertisers, especially those targeting the bigger cities, will begin to evaluate their options. It’s “our kind of TV” after all.

But lest we should get carried away, every online show will not be a TVF Pitchers. And therein lies the real problem, the one of scalability.

Let’s see what the future has in store. Besides, of course, Permanent Roommates Season 2.