Category: TV

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

It’s about 25 years since the start of the satellite television industry in India. While 25 years is a long time, the industry would still qualify as being fairly young when benchmarked against more traditional sectors like FMCG.

 

One of the most interesting facets of a new or young industry is how it builds its talent pool in its early years. This aspect has been of particular interest to me for the television, film (even younger) and digital content (newborn) industries in India.

 

In the ’90s, in the first decade of the TV industry, talent pool creation was largely organic. While some senior hands from other sectors were hired at the top levels by most networks, especially the foreign ones, the bulk of the talent pool was created by hiring young people in the creative field, erstwhile working with ad films or features, often at assistant levels, or by hiring media planners and buyers to staff up the sales function in TV channels.

 

If one had to describe the overall feel of the talent pool in that first decade, they were a bunch of young and semi-maverick people passionate about working on something that was new and growing.

 

It’s difficult to say when exactly that phase ended and the next one started. It would have been somewhere in the 2001-2004 period. The next phase, which lasted for about seven to eight years, that is, till the turn of the decade, involved two key shifts. By now, media was becoming a lucrative option for senior resources in FMCGs, consumer durables and other such marketing-savvy sectors to consider. The top layers of several broadcasters witnessed entry of such “outsiders”.

 

The impact of the “outsiders” was evident in the processes and the marketing focus they brought in. The content creation side of the business, however, didn’t change much, and continues to operate much the same way even today. The failure of the “outsiders” to impact the way the production side works (not what they create, but how they work to create what they create) is probably the missed opportunity of this phase.

 

The second key shift in this phase was related to the geometric (not exponential) increase in the number of channels and hence the demand for talent. While senior hires in big networks happened from outside, the middle level witnessed a lot of demand and not even quality supply. Dangerously then, we saw promotions before they were due. Executives with less than a decade of experience, and not necessarily a glorious career backing them, were put in roles that they were just not ready for. Not that they knew it then, or for that matter, realise it even today.

 

As a result, there was a huge loss from the idea to execution stage, i.e., from the top levels to what goes out to the consumer.  Many network heads carried this frustration with them, of just not being able to get the next level to see where they are coming from.

 

This problem, if we can call it that, began to ease off around 2010, as the young lot that was promoted too early learned the ropes and grew with experience.

 

Now in the third decade, there are two talent challenges the industry is facing. One of them is the reverse of the demand problem from the last decade. With the number of new channels drying up, there are not that many jobs being created within the sector anymore. We see a lot of shifts between networks, but for someone to grow up the ladder is becoming increasingly difficult. There’s just not enough demand for senior level broadcasting jobs today.

 

The second challenge is one that digital poses. Many on the creative and the marketing side of the broadcasting business are being lured by opportunities that digital content could offer in the coming few years. There is also a sense of frustration with the status quo on GEC content, triggering the shift to digital faster than it would have happened otherwise. The next year will be a defining one for digital content in India. And how many make the transition from TV to digital content will be interesting to track.

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

Weekly ratings are a source of excitement and anxiety in the television fraternity. The day and time of their release may have changed over the years, but the drama they bring along has not. Be it a small channel that should not even be looking at a weekly number in isolation, or a big channel where a single episode has more viewership that a small channel’s entirely weekly audience, there’s something in it for everyone.

 

But if you detach a bit, weekly ratings are exciting only to the extent of knowing that big headline. Like a new show with much hype not opening well. Or like the dark horse Naagin getting a start so incredible it made you go: ‘There must be some error here!’ But you don’t get such headlines every week.

 

This week, though, was an exception. We got a headline that was worth the long wait (since Naagin last year). The Sunday, June 12 episode of The Kapil Sharma Show, featuring the cast and the director of Marathi blockbuster Sairat, became the highest-rated episode of the program, and by a significant margin too.

 

Despite the BARC advisory that broadcasters should not use % Ratings in any official communication, the 3.7 number was all over social media yesterday. You can’t hold a good story back, after all.

 

The episode rated almost 70% more than the Saturday episode in the same week, and almost 30% higher than the launch event featuring Shahrukh Khan.

 

Now this should make no sense, right? Sairat may have set new benchmarks for Marathi theatrical business, but why should regional content deliver at a national level? A look at the Maharashtra ratings answered the question in no uncertain terms. The numbers look unreal in today’s times, being 200% more than the national average. And that meant that even if some of the other markets dropped, one state could single-handedly pull the national (HSM Urban) number to a record level.

 

Sairat is a rare film and one can’t expect this to become a trend. And if even we have more success stories like it, there is a geographical limitation. Among the four language states in HSM (quite a misnomer, as some of these markets are not Hindi-speaking, which is the whole point here), Maharashtra has by far the highest representation in the ratings universe. A content piece around Gujarat will have to work doubly hard to get the same impact at the national level, because of lower weightage. And Punjab and West Bengal are even lower in their contribution to the universe.

 

While the regional learning may thus have limited relevance, there’s another one that is far more useful. The film released on April 29, and the episode in question aired six weeks after its release. The episode’s success relied on a sizeable fan base of the film. Equally importantly, there was more to ask and do, as the chatter and the fun and games centred on the familiar content of the film. The episode, in effect, becamea homage to the film, than a promotion of it.

 

This honesty of intention shone through the content. It won’t take much thought for even Maharashtra audiences to desert a big Marathi film’s pre-release promotional episode. But honest content, without a peg to be sniffed out, can touch hearts. More power to those who made this special one happen.

 

Now waiting for the next substantive ratings headline.