MxMIndia

Tag: Shailesh Kapoor

  • The way the sport was growing about a decade ago, football should have been a clear No 2, writes Shailesh Kapoor. But… read on

    Whistle Up The World Cup

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorWe are moved from one World Cup into another. Within a week of the T20 Cricket World Cup final, the FIFA World Cup kicked off in Qatar. So far, it’s been a fairly engaging tournament, though punctuated by four goalless draws on the way. There have already been two big upsets in the first four days, with fancied Argentina and Germany losing to Saudi Arabia and Japan respectively.

     

    The popularity of the sport of football rose in India about 10-15 years ago, as international leagues started getting popular, and a loyal (though niche) fan base started building around specific teams and players. Over the last five years though, the sport seems to have hit some sort of stagnation. In Ormax’s ‘We, The Sports Fans of India’ report, released in April 2022, football has 23.4 million fans in India, and ranks no. 4, just behind kabaddi (28.5 mn) and WWE/ wrestling (26.5 Mn). Cricket, of course, is the dominant leader, at 124.2 Mn.

     

    The way the sport was growing about a decade ago, football should have been a clear No 2, with about 35-40 millions fans, at the very least. One of the impeding factors has been that Indian Super League (ISL), founded in 2013, has failed to fire. The league continues to exist and even get some viewership. But it has not generated fandom for the sport, beyond a handful of states like West Bengal, Goa and Kerala, where the sport has always been big anyway.

     

    In contrast, kabaddi has seen huge build-up of fanbase, starting from virtually nothing, on the back of a vibrant and thriving league. It’s not very difficult to understand why Pro Kabaddi League has been a bigger success than ISL. With exposure to the best of international football, the quality at display in ISL looks mediocre in comparison. And there is no room for mediocre content in a world where we are inundated with options.

     

    The sport one starts watching in one’s teens is often the main sport one watches through the rest of their lives. What one plays (the few who do!) may evolve over the years, but the first choice to watch invariably doesn’t. Football was making inroads on this front, till a few years ago. A new generation of kids in the metro cities would find cricket too slow, and international football became their go-to sport.

     

    Since then, these kids have grown up to be in their 20s, and IPL has grown stronger with each passing year. The gap between cricket and other sports may only be widening now, I suspect.

     

    But that’s a thing of the future. For now, we have another three weeks of what is arguably the biggest global sporting spectacle, and at very friendly India timings too. Relish!

     

  • Between sports and politics, we have a packed 12 weeks, leading up to the end of the year, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Two World Cups & A Mega Election

     

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorWe are in the last quarter of 2022. It’s been a fairly ‘normal’ year, after the painfully-disruptive 2020 and 2021. It’s also a year that saw normalcy return to the entertainment business, despite pandemic-related challenges linked to changing audience habits and taste.

     

    The last two-and-a-half months of the year promise to pack a punch from a mass media perspective. Starting later this month, we have the much-awaited T20 Cricket World Cup in Australia. The tournament was originally scheduled for 2020, but was canceled because of the pandemic. The 2021 edition in India was eventually held in the UAE, with ICC moving the Australia edition to 2022.

     

    India’s campaign kicks off with the marquee India-Pakistan clash on Sunday, October 23. With a depleted and somewhat-inexperienced bowling attack, India has its task cut out. But irrespective of how the team performs, the tournament is bound to be a viewership magnet.

     

    Cricket in Australia always makes for good television. And while the match timings (afternoons) may not be primetime friendly in India, three key India matches are scheduled for Sundays. And being in the middle of Diwali holidays helps, both from viewership and ad revenue perspectives.

     

    Within days of the Cricket World Cup ending starts the FIFA World Cup, being held in Qatar from November 20. Usually a summer event, the World Cup is being held in winters, to avoid the high summer temperatures the host nation witnesses. While the audience is understandably smaller than cricket in India, it’s the first Football World Cup in a long time where the match timings are India-friendly.

     

    And then, there’s the anticipated big-ticket political event, elections to the Gujarat state legislature. While the dates are not out, December is touted to be month. Gujarat elections always hold special interest, because it’s the state from which Prime Minister Modi hails. While a BJP win in these elections will not surprise anyone, the build-up and the campaigning are likely to gets news media all charged up. The Aam Aadmi Party has also thrown its hat in the ring, and a struggling Congress will be hoping that these elections provide some face-saving value to them, after a spate of embarrassing defeats in recent times.

     

    Between sports and politics, we have a packed 12 weeks, leading up to the end of the year.

     

    This column will take a seasonal break and return on November 18, 2022.

     

  • His brand of humour was inclusive and accessible, words whose importance has been diminishing in a streaming-driven content ecosystem, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Raju Srivastav: One of the Last Men Standing

     

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorSeason 1 of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, aired on the then-newly-launched Star One in 2005, will rank high in the list of landmark Indian television shows in the satellite TV era. The season was a rip-roaring success, touching ratings unheard of outside Star Plus at that time. More importantly, it ushered in an era of stand-up comedy on mass Indian television, in turn giving birth to shows like Comedy Circus, and eventually to the biggest comedian India has seen till date, Kapil Sharma.

     

    Raju Srivastav, who passed away earlier this week, was the most popular face of that season. He eventually went on to finish third, behind Sunil Pal and Ahsaan Qureshi. But for almost 15 years since then, Srivastav has had a remarkable television and events career, and was the face of his genre till Sharma burst on the scene.

     

    Over the last few years, stand-up comedy in India has seen a marked shift, with the rise of streaming platforms. Targeting younger and more cosmopolitan audiences than mass TV, platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have relied on more urban humor, often using liberal sprinkling of the English language in their shows and specials. Oddly enough, some of the TV attempts at stand-up comedy in the last few years have been misdirected, trying to get the attention of the streaming audience. What else explains the choice of judges or mentors in some of them, such as Zakir Khan, Mallika Dua and Hussain Dalal in the 2017 season of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge? Not surprisingly, there hasn’t been another season since.

     

    Netflix, on the other hand, seems to have realized that even for their urban, sophisticated audience, a mass comedian like Kapil Sharma is a bigger draw. Their I’m Not Done Yet special with Sharma earlier this year found good traction, with an estimated viewership of 8.8 million audience in India as per Ormax Media estimates.

     

    But nevertheless, mass comedy faces some sort of an identity crisis in India. The rooted, local humor needs a certain breed of comedians, like Srivastav, which the stand-up comedy scene and the open mics, and now even GEC executives, tend to look down upon. We haven’t had a name of any significance breaking out in the last decade, since Sharma’s meteoric rise to fame.

     

    To that extent, Srivastav would be remembered as one of the last men standing, pun intended. His brand of humor was inclusive and accessible, words whose importance has been diminishing in a streaming-driven content ecosystem.

     

  • There's something magical about being at a theatre on a weekend such as that of Brahmastra's release, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    The Big-Motion-Picture Vibe

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorThe long-in-the-making Brahmastra: Part 1 released last Friday. The film opened to packed houses, clocking occupancies of 70%+ in major city multiplexes through the weekend. The big-budget fantasy adventure film may eventually have to rely on non-theatrical revenue sources to recover its costs. But its solid opening weekend performance has infused fresh energy into the Hindi film industry, which has been struggling in recent times to get any major audience attention at all.

     

    I watched the film at a suburban Mumbai multiplex, where the start of the show had to be delayed by about 15 minutes, because some patrons did not take their assigned seats. The theatre staff had to intervene, and people had to be moved through a 100% packed auditorium, to their correct seats. One could sense that even the staff was enjoying this thankless job. When did they last see a packed auditorium for an original Hindi language film, after all?

     

    We would have to go back to Oct 2, 2019, when the Hrithik-Tiger starrer War released to an overwhelming audience response. But that was a holiday, unlike September 9. Search for a non-holiday opening of this stature for an original Hindi language film took me back to June 29, 2018, when Rajkumar Hirani’s Sanju, also starring Ranbir Kapoor, released.

     

    There’s something magical about being at a theatre on a weekend such as that of Brahmastra’s release. There’s a communal bond between the hundreds of audiences, in the lobby, and then inside the auditorium. They are connected by their love for going to the movies, if not by their love for cinema itself. The atmosphere brims with excitement and anticipation. No home viewing, on the biggest TV screen and the best sound system, can match that.

     

    Brahmastra has its share of flaws. But lack of imagination is not one of them. The franchise charters into territories erstwhile reserved for Hollywood films, where visual effects and scale front-end a film, leading to a viewing experience that’s immersive and big-screen worthy. Brahmastra wears its ambition on its sleeve. And the audience could feel that vibe over the last three months of the film’s campaign, resulting in a whole-hearted endorsement on the opening weekend, despite boycott calls and mixed reviews.

     

    Less than a month before Brahmastra’s release, another film that one may have been tempted to call a major motion picture (Laal Singh Chadha) failed on open, despite releasing on a holiday. The contrast between the opening-weekend performance of the two films sums up what theatre-going audiences are trying to tell the film industry: Convince us that your film is worthy of my money, by justifying why it needs to be watched on the big screen.

     

    It’s now for the filmmakers to listen up and act.

     

  • It's a testimony to MxM India's value of independent journalism that not once, across these 385 columns, have I been told to edit or qualify anything I have written, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Shailesh Kapoor: 11 years, 385 not out

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorMxM India completes 11 years today. This column started in the eleventh month of this website, on Aug 9, 2012, with this piece. The one you are reading now in no. 385. Writing for MxM India has been a very satisfying decade-long journey for me. It’s a testimony to MxM India’s value of independent journalism that not once, across these 385 columns, have I been told to edit or qualify anything I have written.

     

    So much has changed over this decade. The initial columns were primarily around the linear television business, focusing on GEC, news or sports in most weeks. This column was even called TV Trail in its initial years! In 2015, I first wrote about a streaming shows (TVF Pitchers). Little did I know then that this will be a norm a few years later, and TV-centric columns will be less regular. Over the last 3-4 years, the television columns have been more about industry issues than about the progress it is making. The linear TV industry in India is stuck in a time warp of its own making, and that’s been a pet peeve for me, which finds an outlet here every now and then.

     

    But it’s the rise of streaming, and related aspects such as the growth of dubbed content (such as this piece), that has dominated my writing in the last couple of years. The Indian streaming story has been a fascinating one thus far. And we are, by no means, in a settled phase. Which means there will be a lot more to write about it in the coming year too.

     

    IPL, meanwhile, has been a constant fixture over this decade. I have written about 15 columns on it. The league has grown stronger by the year, emerging as the second-biggest sporting property in the world this year after NFL.

     

    The last five years have also seen the dramatic rise of Instagram in India, including that of Reels within it. I’m that rare breed who is not on the platform, and have often found myself trying to keep pace with the new socio-cultural trends that either emerge of Instagram or find magnification through it.

     

    While so much has changed over a decade, the unique, multi-layered entity called the Indian audience continues to remain fascinating. It’s difficult to second-guess their minds, and yet, one must learn ways to do it, given the nature of Ormax Media’s work. In 2022, the Indian audience is more demanding than ever before. Their rejection of content can be outright brutal (case in point: Laal Singh Chaddha), and their acceptance of content can be whole-hearted (IPL, Marvel films, K.G.F 2, Anupama, etc.).

     

    As this column nears the 400-mark, in MxM India’s twelfth year, it is my love for the Indian audience that will continue to power it.

     

  • MxMIndia columnists Ranjona Banerji and Shailesh Kapoor on the Adani group acquiring ownership of the news network

    Two views on the NDTV stake buy

     

     

     

    NDTV Stake Sale: What Next?

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorThe news of the Adani group acquiring a sizeable stake in NDTV has been the significant media highlight this week. And for good reason. When it comes to questioning the ruling establishment at the Centre, NDTV remains the last news network standing. In particular, the Hindi channel NDTV India’s star anchor Ravish Kumar has built a sizeable cult following for himself in the Left & Liberal sections of the population, with his unique style of commentary on the state of the nation. He’s incisive, often scathingly sarcastic, but always backed with solid research. In a community of anchors who are more than happy to toe the establishment line, Kumar comes across as a lone warrior. None of his colleagues at the NDTV channels have managed to match his towering persona either.

    But the NDTV channels are not popular favorites. They have consistently rated poorly, which is not too surprising, given that the mood of the nation over the last decade is in sharp contrast to the NDTV approach. In our consumer work, we often find audiences describing NDTV channels as “Pakistani”, which sums up not just NDTV’s mass imagery in India, but also the state of Indian news media today, where anyone who’s not evidently pro-Right can be termed as ‘anti-national’.

    But the NDTV network has managed to command a good price in the ad marketplace despite its low ratings. It has a legacy (including its founder Dr. Prannoy Roy) that dates to its Doordarshan days (remember The World This Week?). And that a significant (even if minority) section of brand marketers is left-of-center helps too.

    Where does NDTV go from here is a premature question. The Adanis don’t have a majority stake in the network as of now, though they may push towards that in the future from what one understands. If that happens, one can expect the network to change sides, in terms of its ideological disposition. But it is difficult to see how any of the key faces of the channel’s current image, such as Dr. Roy or Kumar, will continue to be a part of the network in that case.

    Journalists like Kumar always seem to find a way of making their voices heard, even if they have to move from television to digital, from well-budgeted reports to bootstrapped ones. There’s a certain swashbuckling quality to this brand of journalism, which thrives on adversity.

    With the advent of social media and digital news brands, television news has lost its bearings over the last decade or so. While the eyeballs and hence the ad revenues continue to come, respect has been more elusive. Digital platforms, on the other hand, have experimented with more cutting-edge work, despite lower budgets and poor monetization models. While TV has become all about debates (Kumar is a rare anchor whose show is about reports than debates), online news platforms have filled in the space to fact-find, analyse and critique, important attributes that the media must have for a democracy to thrive.

    The core NDTV viewer, hence, will not miss their news, even if the network’s management changed hands. He may have to just find another destination for it. But TV news will be poorer, because it will lose whatever little heterogeneity it currently has. And that’s not a happy thought.

     

    Shailesh Kapoor is Founder and CEO, Ormax Media. He writes on MxMIndia on Fridays. His views here are personal

    		  

    What’s the future for NDTV?

     

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Ranjona Banerji“Journalists at NDTV have a unique opportunity to examine their own work and their stances. There is a small world outside TV and outside mainstream media which does still do real journalism. It is not too late for any of them to work on those,” writes Ranjona Banerji

    The Adani attempt to buy out the news channel NDTV is being presented as a hostile takeover by NDTV. And NDTV fans as well as media watchers see it as a general attempt by BJP and Modi government sympathisers to control the media and the general narrative.

    We know that point 2 has been the background music since the Modi government came to power.

    We also know that the Adani Group is very sensitive to criticism and has gone out of its was to use SLAPP tactics to harass journals and journalists who dare to discuss their problems with debt, and the favours it has got and so on.

    Once you get past the general background chatter of whether NDTV was liberal enough or critical enough of the Modi government, what are you left with?

    For one, the tragedy that of all the television channels in India, NDTV was the only one seen as being critical of the Modi regime and the BJP. This is in spite of the fact that NDTV is nowhere near as critical as some sections of the print media and definitely nowhere near various digital platforms. Several of its anchors present the BJP with more opportunity than other parties to present their “views” and some anchors have not yet understood that a journalist’s role is to question, regardless of your inclinations.

    There is also the sentimental background that NDTV was the first of India’s private TV channels and several older viewers have been attached to it since then.

    Several who watch NDTV’s Hindi news channel bemoan the potential loss of Ravish Kumar who has been the bravest of all NDTV journalists when it comes to questioning those in power.

    While the legal and financial battles continue at their own pace, and the owners and promoters of NDTV negotiate, the journalists at NDTV have a unique opportunity to examine their own work and their stances. There is a small world outside TV and outside the mainstream media which does still do real journalism. It is not too late for any of them to work on those. The internet and the world of streaming offers any number of opportunities. The problem is the money. In the current situation, it’s never going to be as much income as established TV.

    The other problem is reach. Where these big names and stars who have become household familiars can leverage their popularity to draw in viewers and therefore possibly money.

    Those of us on the outside of big game (fake) journalism know how tough it is. But it is not impossible.

    Cowardice and fear of losing influence is a folly (okay, bad pun, I know I know) because greatness beckons on the other side.

    Maybe Adani’s attempt to take over and potentially destroy NDTV can be a seminal point, a turning point for Indian journalism. Especially for TV. It tells you that no one is safe. It tells you that our business models are shot to pieces.

    It also tells you how little the general public understands. I see a lot of carping that the media is only after money. That is the rank stupidity of sections of our audience who somehow believe that newsgathering does not cost anything and that people who work in the media do not deserve to make a living. But all right, let’s ignore these riled up innocents.

    Instead, we wait and watch. Not for what the Adani Group may do to NDTV. Several such buyouts in the past have destroyed media organisations. From the Ambanis (via Raj Salgaoncar) and the Observer to Vijaypat Singhania and Indian Post to Subhas Chandra and DNA. And several media organisations have wilfully destroyed themselves like India Today.

    Will NDTV be one more tragic story of a good (by TV standards) media house biting the dust or will its employees wake up and put up a fight?

    I’m for the fight.

    Yeah, maybe there is an optimist somewhere left inside me.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.

     

     

  • The days of push marketing are numbered, at least for entertainment products, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Pull, not Push: Film marketing is no longer the same

     

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorA long weekend, like the one that spanned from Aug 11 to 15, is hot property for film producers. Big holidays boost box-office collections by upto 75-100%. In this regard, Aamir Khan’s Forrest Gump remake Laal Singh Chaddha got the perfect release date. It was also his first release in almost four years. But the audience just didn’t turn up. Khan, who was the first to breach the 100, 200 and 300 cr box-office levels, will have to settle for about Rs 60 crore this time.

     

    Not so long ago (through pre-pandemic years seem like a thing of the distant past), a saleable movie star was box-office insurance. You could make the worst film, but he would at least get bums on seats on the first weekend. Things have changed rapidly over the last two years. Laal Singh Chaddha, for example, could never recover from the tepid response to its trailer, and all the marketing that followed seemed like a futile catch-up. Khan has been a marketing trendsetter from the times of Ghajini. But he missed a trick this time, by not realising that the nature of marketing may have changed fundamentally.

     

    Films, like many other product categories, have extensively relied on push marketing for years. You essentially spend money to “buy” share of voice and mind, and build enough “buzz” to get people to watch the film when it releases. We have seen Shah Rukh Khan promote some of his weaker films with this intent, and with some very good results too.

     

    Push marketing worked well in simpler times, when media options were limited and more consolidated. In today’s digital-dominant ecosystem, you cannot push all the buttons at the same time. To begin with, it will be insanely expensive, given the growing fragmentation of media consumption over the last few years. And then, there are ‘media’ (like the SVOD apps) that are ad-free anyway. And then, there are other media, like social media, where marketing works best when it is organic and user-generated… when it is led by a consumer pull, than by a manufacturer’s push.

     

    This is a fundamental change, and one that many in the media or the marketing industry are currently not adapting very well to. How do you create consumer pull for a new product that has no prior brand or franchise value? So many things have to come together: The product has to service a real need, and come across as original in its intent. And the marketing must be imaginative and disruptive, to stand a chance of being embraced by the organic pop culture that accepts and cancels new things every day.

     

    In Tamil and Telugu cinema, the top stars still carry an aura that ensures a natural consumer pull by just their presence on the film’s poster or trailer. But we have seen many such films crumble from the second day onwards too. So even when an agent of pull is available, more works needs to be done.

     

    It’s not easy to create consumer pull. After all, if you could “create” something that’s meant to be “organic”, would it be “organic” anyway? And that’s where the conundrum that lures marketers towards the classical push marketing approach lies.

     

    But days of push marketing are numbered, at least for entertainment products. With the success of Pushpa to KGF to the Marvel films, and a dozen failures on the other side, the writing is on the wall. Can the film industry pull up its socks then, all pun intended?

     

  • It's perhaps time to boycott the boycott hashtags, to cancel the cancel culture,writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Time to Cancel the Cancel Culture?

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorWhen I first heard the term ‘Cancel Culture’ a couple of years ago, it intrigued me. The idea that you can ‘cancel’ someone, typically a celebrity, for their unacceptable comments or conduct, especially on a topic of contemporary significance, seemed like an empowering one. It also seemed democratic in its intent, because a group of common people could hold a celebrity accountable for their actions or words, by ‘canceling’ them en masse.

     

    In India, however, the term did not come with the nuances, such as those around the free speech debate, it carries in Western cultures, where it originated. The semantics changed to “Boycott”, a word that has since been used to attempt cancelation of several celebrities, films and corporates, often for reasons that are more political than moral, social or cultural.

     

    As I write this, a search on #Boycott on Twitter throws up three prominent suggestions: #BoycottLaalSinghChaddha, #BoycottRakshaBandhan (the film, not the festival) and #BoycottAliaBhatt. All three are related to films releasing this week. Alia Bhatt’s Darlings has dropped on Netflix today, while the other two films, starring Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar respectively, release on August 11.

     

    It may not always be easy to trace root causes of such boycotts, because those causes often tend to be more generic than specific. If a community of trolls decides to boycott a particular film or its lead actor, they will find more than a few reasons to do so. It could be a comment made by the celebrity in the past (sometimes a decade ago), something ‘inappropriate’ they wore, a ‘problematic’ character they played in a film in the not-so-recent past, or all of the above.

     

    The root causes may not always be linked to the bigger celebrities alone. Raksha Bandhan, a film headlined by an actor (Akshay Kumar) who generally has a right-of-centre political image, is being ‘boycotted’ because the film’s writer Kanika Dhillon has been outspoken about topics such as lynching, and has made ‘cow’ references in some of her tweets on this topic. These tweets are not from this year, but have been dug out in the week leading up to the film’s release.

     

    Then, there’s the generic evergreen trending topic: #BoycottBollywood. Since Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide in June 2020, the call to boycott the Hindi film industry in its entirety has been a recurring one. It’s been fanned by some within the industry itself, most notably Kangana Ranaut. The industry has also been given the name ‘Urduwood’, a term that suggests how the industry has turned its back on Hindu culture and ethos.

     

    The underlying politics is apparent even to the most naïve. News channels play their part in furthering this narrative, using subtler variants of these hashtags, but never showing any subtlety of discourse thereafter.

     

    In times when the Hindi film industry is suffering from an identity crisis, with films from the Southern industries and Hollywood doing better, it becomes a soft target for hardline politics.

     

    The good news, if one can call it that, is that there is no evidence that such boycotts impact the fate of these films or stars, either in theatres or on streaming. Alia Bhatt, who has been on the ‘boycott list’ of the Right Wing for what seems like perpetuity now, is at the peak of her professional career currently, and has delivered one of the few hits that the Hindi film industry have seen this year: Gangubai Kathiawadi.

     

    Since the paying audience doesn’t care much, there isn’t much heft that these hashtags and social media trends carry. But they continue to exist, and are only getting more frequent and inane of late.

     

    It’s perhaps time to boycott the boycott hashtags, to cancel the cancel culture.

     

  • Sudhir Chaudhary has used his trademark style to become one of the most popular Hindi anchors in India, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Politics on the Sleeve

     

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorThe Hindi news television genre is buzzing this week. One of the biggest anchors in the category, Sudhir Chaudhary, has changed channels. His new weekdays 9pm show, Black & White, premiered on Aaj Tak this week. Chaudhary has spent over a decade at Zee News, which included a controversial extortion case back in 2012, for which he and a colleague had to face legal action, including judicial custody.

     

    I’m no fan of Chaudhary and his rabble-rousing style of anchoring, where Muslims are often the target. But over the last few years, Chaudhary has used this trademark style to become one of the most popular Hindi anchors in India, with a loyal fan following that’s only matched by a couple of other news anchors on television.

     

    In today’s polarised media environment, marquee anchors tend to define the political stance of the channels they are on. The role of the anchor, has, thus widened from only getting audiences to a particular time slot when they are anchoring. Anchors are now driving the brand narrative of news channels across languages. And this brand narrative is decisively political.

     

    That’s one of the reasons news that’s not political in nature hardly finds any presence on the primetime roster. And when it does, the story angle taken is primarily political. Most anchors feel under-leveraged if they do not use their political capital in their shows. They make it a point to wear their political disposition on their sleeves.

     

    But they also understand that the audience can’t be fed political news all the time. As a result, we have seen the emergence of news topics that are ‘pseudo-relevant’, i.e., the audience is made to believe the news being dished out is of high importance in their lives, while actually, it may have almost no relevance at all.

     

    One such sub-genre is ‘communal news’, where stories that are essentially ‘Hindus vs. Muslims’ in their construct are chosen, with an anchor position that’s invariably pre-decided. This trend started in 2014, and has since been on the rise. The Tablighi Jamaat coverage during the first Covid lockdown in 2020, and the Gyanvapi mosque controversy more recently, are evident examples.

     

    But you do not need a story to ignite communal sentiments among the audience. You could just do a random story, passing it off as research. Sudhir Chaudhary’s ‘Jihaad ka diagram’ story in 2020 is a notorious example.

     

    Not everyone watches television news anymore. But there is a strong correlation we observe in our work, between political awareness and consumption of TV news. To say it differently, those watching TV news are more likely to have defined political views, including whom they want to vote for in the next elections. In turn, they can shape the opinion of others (family and friends) around them who are often sitting on the fence till a week or two before an important election.

     

    Thus, to say that not watching TV news is a solution to fixing things that plague the genre is just being naïve. Sadly though, no strong alternative narrative has emerged, and not much may change anytime soon.

     

    But in hope, we live.

     

    Shailesh Kapoor is Founder and CEO of Ormax Media. He writes on MxMIndia every Friday. His views here are personal.

     

  • The first half of 2022 has seen its fair share of hits and misses on the streaming front. Shailesh Kapoor picks five Indian originals that made a mark in H1/2022

    2022 So Far: The Best of Indian Streaming

     

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh Kapoor2022 is more than halfway through, and even as the pandemic lurks around, the year has a semblance of normalcy to it, something we have not felt since 2019. The entertainment narrative in the pandemic years was largely centered around streaming (direct-to-OTT) content. This year, the conversation has shifted significantly to theatrical films, with the release of some big blockbusters, especially in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada languages.

     

    But streaming content continues to build a wider audience base, and is now a flourishing parallel industry that’s hard to not take notice of. The first half of the year has seen its fair share of hits and misses on the streaming front. Here’s my choice of five Indian streaming originals that made a mark in Jan-Jun 2022:

     

    5. A Thursday (Disney+ Hotstar)

    There haven’t been too many direct-to-OTT films that have made a mark this year, as the best content has been released theatrically first. But the Feb 2022 Hotstar thriller A Thursday, headlined by Yami Gautam Dhar, got the audience attention like no other film could. With an estimated viewership of 25.5 Mn, it is the most-watched streaming original film in India this year, ahead of the more-hyped Gehraiyaan. The thriller, with a very relevant message in the last act, may end up being the biggest direct-to-OTT film of the year too, given that streamers are now shifting their focus firmly to series than films.

     

     

    4. Gullak S3 (Sony LIV)

    Gullak is a partnership between a platform (Sony LIV) and a producer (TVF) who are both recognized for some excellent work in the streaming space over the last few years. The show revels in its simplicity and the ‘aam aadmi’ connect, making it stand out in a category that’s still driven by a predominantly cosmopolitan outlook. There has been amazing consistency across the three seasons of the show, in terms of character portrayal, the quality of humor, and the overall tonality of the show itself. One hopes the fourth season is round the corner, because the show’s growing fanbase is eagerly anticipating it.

     

     

    3. Suzhal: The Vortex (Amazon Prime Video)

    Created by Pushkar-Gayathri, of Vikram Vedha fame, crime thriller Suzhal has managed to find an audience outside its native (Tamil) market, despite the setting of the story setting being rooted in the local culture. The streaming category has made the language barrier a lesser factor over the last two years, and we can expect more shows like Suzhal to break through in the Hindi market in the coming months.

     

     

    2. Rocket Boys (Sony LIV)

    Rocket Boys, a biopic that traces the life of Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, is a masterful recreation of an important chapter in modern Indian history. But it’s not the historical significance that makes the show so delightful to watch. Rocket Boys, created by Abhay Pannu, has an irresistible vibe, as it seamlessly blends humor with drama, romance with history, and irreverence with a sense of responsibility. Imaginative casting is one of the show’s strengths, and Jim Sarbh as Bhabha is particularly outstanding.

     

     

    1. Panchayat S2 (Amazon Prime Video)

    Panchayat is the second TVF show on this list. TVF’s strong presence on any Indian streaming list is a given, given the consistency of their offering over a few years now. Unlike Gullak, which has a more homely and next-door vibe, Panchayat has a certain cinematic quality to it, despite its simple, almost innocent, imagery. You can sense that this show is going to only get bigger and more ambitious with each season, because it’s uniquely wry style of giving social commentary is some sort of an acquired taste.

     

  • We can expect that the second half of 2022 will not be short of fireworks, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    2022: Six Months & Counting

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorJust like that, we are already into the second half of 2022. It’s been a somewhat unusual year for the Indian entertainment business. The last two years have been heavily impacted by the pandemic, but 2022 has had a more ‘normal’ feel to it, and that itself has been refreshing.

     

    The maximum action was seen on the theatrical front, with a slew of new releases seeing audiences go back to the theatres in big numbers across India. K.G.F: Chapter 2 and RRR have been huge success stories, with the latter finding enhanced fan following in the US after its Netflix release in May. The Hindi theatrical market, which has struggled for two years now, saw sporadic success beyond the dubbed versions of the two blockbusters mentioned above. The Kashmir Files, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 and Gangubai Kathiawadi got the audience, while several other films, including big-ticket Akshay Kumar starrers Bachchhan Pandey and Samrat Prithviraj, struggled at the box office.

     

    In the first six months of the year, Hindi language’s share of the domestic gross box office stands at about 35%, down from 44% in the pre-pandemic year (2019), but up from 27% in the two pandemic years put together (2020-21). The twist in the tale is that a staggering 43% of Hindi box office in Jan-Jun 2022 has come from Hindi dubbed version of South Indian films.

     

    While theatrical films grabbed the headlines, this half-year period has been somewhat muted for the streaming category. There has been a spate of new launches across platforms, but very few have achieved unqualified success. Rudra (Disney+ Hotstar), Panchayat S2 (Prime Video) and Aashram S3 (MX Player) crossed an estimated viewership of 25 Million audience in India, while Rocket Boys and the recently-launched Suzhal: The Vortex have received widespread critical acclaim.

     

    News of Netflix struggling to grow its subscriber base, worldwide and in India, continued to surface every few weeks in this half year. Big brands can sometimes feel the burden of giant expectations they set for themselves, and Netflix currently faces this challenge on the global front.

     

    As usual, there wasn’t much in the television content space to write home about. A deftly-executed season of Shark Tank India was noticed and appreciated, but its success was largely streaming-centric, as the show failed to find a sizeable audience on linear television.

     

    While there was little action on the content side, the TV industry was not short of action on the industry side, with the return of the news ratings, and the subsequent mad rush we witnessed, in which almost every news channel staked a claim at the no. 1 position. February was the elections month that saw five states, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, go to the polls. News channels had enough on their plate to keep themselves busy, including controversies around several prominent anchors.

     

    But the big media story of the first half of 2022 is the astronomical price for which the IPL broadcast rights were sold. The auctions place IPL unquestionably at the top position on the list of the most powerful media brand in India, in a year that also saw two new teams make their IPL debut, one of which went on to win it.

     

    If the first half of the year is any indication, we can expect that the second half of 2022 will not be short of fireworks.

     

  • Linear TV has lost its pole position this week, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    IPL Media Rights: Indian Streaming’s Watershed Moment is Here!

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorIPL media rights went under the hammer this week, and the results are out. The overall value of rights has gone up by almost 200%, though the growth is a notch lesser if one looks at the per-match average, as there are more matches lined up in the coming years because of the addition of new franchises.

     

    The growing stature and commercial value of IPL is not surprising. It’s literally the only TV property in India that has “event value” today. Gone are the days when big-ticket reality shows rated 4%+. Gone are the days when a single TV show worked across the audience spectrum, amassing event-like numbers every night. In times of highly-fragmented viewership, IPL is the only TV property that has any sense of audience aggregation at all.

     

    What surprised me, albeit mildly, is the massive growth in the price of the digital rights. In September 2017, when the last auction was held (for IPL 2018-22), Star India won on a consolidated TV + Digital bid. But if you look at the highest bids for the TV and digital packages individually, they stood at INR 11,050 Cr for TV (Sony Pictures) and INR 3,900 for digital (Facebook). That’s a ratio of 2.83.

     

    This time, the main domestic rights (Package A & B) have gone for INR 23,575 Cr (TV) and INR 20,500 Cr (digital), i.e., a ratio of only 1.15. While TV rights have gone up significantly too (even if you look at the per-match average), it’s the change in the ratio that’s a sign of things to come: Digital is no longer niche. It’s as mainstream as TV. Even if the viewership numbers are still higher on TV, digital has the momentum, and the advertiser sentiment, on its side.

     

    If you also consider Package C, which is another digital package for non-exclusive rights (eventually taken by Viacom 18 itself, who also took Package B), the ratio of TV to digital is 0.99. In simple terms, from being almost a third of TV rights five years ago, digital rights of IPL have gone for a notch higher than the TV rights this time.

     

    The absence of an integrated measurement system will be felt more than ever before. Advertisers now have two equally-sizeable media to put their IPL moneys on. But they won’t have an integrated currency measurement to help them plan it well. This was a lesser issue so far, not only because digital was the smaller piece all these years, but also because the last five years had both rights under the same network, and the selling was often bundled. Both those factors have now changed, and we are in for some eventful times. Both Star India, who continue to hold the TV rights, and Viacom 18 will have to innovate out of their skins to monetise their prized grabs.

     

    IPL digital rights crossing TV rights in value is a watershed moment in the Indian entertainment business. Linear TV has lost its pole position this week. And streaming is a worthy successor.