By Shailesh Kapoor
Read Part 1
Look at what Indian television has done to itself, over the last five years in particular. In meetings with non-television executives, it’s a topic of ridicule. A gorilla falling in the love with the lead protagonist of a show is the latest metaphor of this discourse (for the record, that didn’t actually happen on the show). The metaphors may change, but the ridicule has gone stronger by the day. Because there are at least a dozen bizarre sub-plots playing out at any point of time, across channels and shows. And I’m not even counting regional content here.
But then, why should one worry about what a senior FMCG, media agency or film executive thinks of GEC content? They are not the target audience after all. Fair point, but the problem extends to the consumers (the target audience) too. They enjoy a hearty laugh on this topic, often dismissing it as something that’s done “TRP ke liyeâ€. In the near future, they would be less forgiving.
In any case, the “TRPs†are not going up. The Hindi GEC genre has lost about 10% of its viewership since early this year. While this can be attributed to BARC India settling down and its measurement getting more robust, that’s an easy fig leaf to hide the viewer disenchantment behind.
The single-most telling evidence of the viewer-side problem has been discussed here before – that new shows have stopped opening. None of the 22 Hindi GEC weekday shows launched this calendar year opened at a first-week average rating of even 2%. And this problem has been magnifying over the last 2-3 years, with its first seeds sown even before BARC India ratings existed.
Some tend to pass the “blame†to digital and social media, suggesting that television is losing its significance because the Internet is taking over. While that may be true for a small section of audiences, when projected as a larger idea, it becomes a gross exaggeration. And cricket, film premieres and certain shows have continued to rate very well, highlighting that content deficit, more than anything else, must take the blame.
Naagin is one such show that has rated very well in its first season. It pains me when Naagin is clubbed with other examples of silliness on our television. Naagin was anything but that. It was an out-and-out fantasy show, well-produced and true to its promise. It did not start as something and then becoming something else. Our mythology and folklore has rich and imaginative stories to get inspiration from. Many of them have supernatural elements in them. Adapting them for television can surely not be a no-no.
The problems are largely with the dailies, and it’s a systemic problem. Episodes are conceived, written and shot on the fly. There is no real “development†on a running show – that precious word is reserved for new shows. But even there, ideas are increasingly moving away from what India wants.
If you are a television executive today, think of how you will be remembered three decades from now. “I worked in the dark age of Indian television, when nothing made sense and content was a subject of public mockery, for its unparalleled idiocy†can surely not be a good story to tell your grandchildren. Come to think of it, it can be a funny story though.
Yes, there are some exceptions that exist. But when an entire category gets branded in a particular way, the exceptions need to work that much harder to stand out.
Call it creative bankruptcy or just inertia, the problem is magnifying with every passing month. These are ideal signs for disruption waiting to happen, when someone enters (or redefines) the game, changes its rules, and walks away with all the glory.
I want to know who that “someone†is. And I look up to all good television executives, some of whom I truly respect, to find that someone within themselves.