MxMIndia

Tag: Shailesh Kapoor

  • There are so many intricacies to the Indian news ecosystem that the next year or two can be highly exciting, even unpredictable, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Indian News Diaries: In 2022-23, Expect The Unexpected

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorOver the last two months, there’s been considerable action on the television news front. We saw two high-profile and well-promoted channel launches, which itself is a rarity over the last few years. Times Now Navbharat launched early August, and earlier this month, the India Today group launched Good News Today, replacing Aaj Tak Tez. Like most years in India, 2022 is a big elections year too, with the Uttar Pradesh elections likely to be held in the first quarter itself, which serves as more than a sound reason to launch (or relaunch) Hindi news channels ahead of the festive season in 2021.

     

    Over the last few months, the state of our news television has been stagnant, to use a mild word. Known issues of credibility deficit and growing concerns around fake news have not been addressed actively, and a culture of ‘armchair journalism’, where most senior editors hardly ever step out of their studios at all, is only being strengthened with time.

     

    The other part of the news television story that has remained unchanged is the absence of news channel ratings. There’s very little we have heard on that front, except that the news broadcasters fraternity, if it can be called that, is lobbying to get the ratings back. But in a genre that’s highly political by its very nature, this will not be an easy ask.

     

    Despite no news ratings for a year now, there’s very little evidence that adspends on news television have been impacted. But that’s more to do with the size of the news genre. If this had happened to a genre like infotainment or music, it may have died an instant death. But news television has enough going for it, especially because it is popularly believed to deliver a core audience that’s complementary in gender to the core GEC audience.

     

    Many had expected digital news to take over the news ecosystem in India this decade, but that’s not been happening at a scale that was predicted a few years ago. There has been some ground-breaking work on digital news over the last two years, a lot more than what some top TV channels have to show. But the business model remains challenging, and getting Indian audience to pay for news, of all the things, is going to be a long-drawn educational process. In a vast and populous country like ours, even convincing the big metros that quality news does not come free can take several years.

     

    There are so many intricacies to the Indian news ecosystem that the next year or two can be highly exciting, even unpredictable. Will print be able to sail past the headwinds it has faced during the pandemic? Will television news find the respect that it lacks, even when it has the numbers? Will digital news find a business model that is realistic and sustainable?

     

    To borrow a popular slogan, expect the unexpected.

     

     

  • There are several questions as we wait patiently for movie theatres to return to their fully glory again, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    See You at the Movies… in 2022

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorEven as the pandemic lurks around, with its perpetual looming presence, we are more than two-thirds into 2021 now. It will soon be time to talk about 2022, a year that many will be hoping is the better than the last two. The story was not every different when 2020 was ending. 2021 was meant to bring in a change of fortunes. Hopefully, the change will be for real this time.

     

    The one category in the Indian media and entertainment industry that will be looking forward to this change of fortunes the most is the business of theatrical exhibition of movies. It’s been a virtual washout for the industry over the last 18 months. While studios and production houses have kept the ship running because of streaming platforms, the exhibition sector has been waiting, for what now seems like eternity. There was a brief period towards the end of last year when the ball was beginning to roll again, but the second wave changed that.

     

    There are several questions on the industry’s mind while they wait patiently for movie theatres to return to their fully glory again: Have the audience lost the habit of going to the movie theatres? How many theatres will shut down permanently because of the pandemic? How tough will the recovery be? Will there ever be a recovery at all?

     

    The year 2022 will give us most of these answers. Sporadic releases (like Bell Bottom two weeks ago) may give a sense of things on ground, but they are not enough to answer questions of the nature above. The next four months will see select films coming out with headwinds in the form of government restrictions and a skeptical audience. At some stage, towards the end of 2021, one can expect the sporadicity to give way to continuity. Conditions (read ‘no third wave’) apply, of course.

     

    So, what can we expect from 2022 from the box-office, assuming that theatres are open across India by then, to full capacity? A lot. We can expect one of the best-ever years, if not the best, in terms of gross collections at the box office. 2019 had set the record at `10,948 Cr, and while crossing that may be a tough ask, I don’t expect 2022 to be far behind. The audience is starving for the outdoor experience movie-going provides, and no amount of movie consumption on television or streaming can be a worthy substitute.

     

    The recovery is almost certain to be driven by films from the South, where a host of big films are lined up for a national release, with their Hindi dubbed versions set to give original Hindi films a run for their money. In 2019, the last full theatrical year that was pandemic-free, South dubs contributed only 5% of the Hindi theatrical business. This proportion may go up to as high as 20% in 2022.

     

    Many single screens may have permanently shut (and we will know the numbers only when continuity is restored), but that won’t impact the business in material terms, given that these are likely to be the low-collecting theatres. My bigger concern is a sense that the content ecosystem may have become too streaming-obsessed of late, and some of the top creators may no longer have sound judgment on how the two media (theatrical and streaming) must be handled differently, and yet work on some common principles of what Indian entertainment stands for. This could impact content innovation, and the nature of content coming out in the theatres in 2022, and even 2023.

     

    We will know how things pan out only in a few months. But one thing is certain: Movie theatres are not dead. They are ready to make a spectacular comeback, of a degree that will surprise many analysts.

     

  • It is still a great idea, but general entertainment channels are currently missing the trick, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Shailesh Kapoor: Why are fiction franchises on Hindi GECs misfiring?

    Shailesh KapoorBy Shailesh Kapoor

     

    In both films and streaming categories, it is now well-established that building strong franchises is a key to success. Over the last decade, it is nearly impossible to find a film in Hollywood’s top grossers’ list that’s not a sequel or a spin-off. For every hit show on Netflix that’s a new story, about two others are new seasons of a successful franchise show.

     

    Bollywood has been flirting with franchises for over a decade, with mixed success. The streaming category in India, however, has taken to the idea better. Shorter gap between two seasons allows for better continuity, and the story and the characters have been kept consistent across seasons too. Very soon, some of India’s top streaming shows will be entering their third seasons.

     

    The latest to be bitten by the franchise bug is the Hindi GEC fiction category. Though there was that odd show here and there (Na Aana Iss Des Laado 2, for example) in the past, it’s the last few months that have seen a lot of action on this front. New seasons of Saath Nibhaana Saathiya, Pratigya, Sasural Simar Ka, Kuch Rang Pyaar Ke Aise Bhi, Balika Vadhu and Bade Achhe Lagte Hain have all come in quick succession.

     

    But it’s not been a smooth ride. Most of these shows have performed poorly, and even the better ones have been more than a few notches lower than their respective originals in their ratings. In fact, there is no example at all where the new show has grown over the previous one, which is the essential premise of why franchises are built in the first place.

     

    There are a few reasons why this has happened. The idea of seasons and franchises is alien to GEC audiences. Theatrical audiences in India got introduced to franchises because of Hollywood. Franchises are easily the most intuitive option for streaming, where you can binge-watch seasons, not just episodes. But on television, where appointment remains the Holy Grail, viewers have no reference points. There is no overlap with onternational audience at all, and audiences for Indian streaming shows are still a fraction of the mass GEC base, at less than 20% at best. For the rest, it’s a new idea being dished out.

     

    Hence, for the idea to work, viewers would need to see its organic value. ‘Why is the show coming back after all these years?’ is the central question to answer. Unfortunately, most shows have not managed to answer this question, or even attempt to. Saath Nibhaana Saathiya did a good job of creating a promotional and content segue from the old show into the new in its launch month. But most others have left it to the viewers to figure out things for themselves, perhaps implicitly assuming that the franchise education of Hindi GEC audiences is already complete.

     

    It is not. It would have been if Bollywood would have had a better track record with franchises. But with films like Race 3, it has created an impression that doing new parts of a series is just a marketing gimmick. Which is probably true as well. So many franchise films, and now fiction shows on TV, in India are just branding ideas than story ideas. Many of them do not have the cast or the characters from the original, making the connect a tenuous (at best) thematic one. On a category where daily time-spent is the key, a branding idea can never replace a content idea. GECs may be learning this the hard way.

     

    In the first-ever column I wrote for this website (read here), way back in 2012, I strongly advocated seasons for fiction shows on Indian television. But the argument there was entirely different. It was about using the mid-season breaks to buy time for quality content development, and to prevent the show from looking progressively stale. Ironically, most shows that have launched new seasons this year ended way past their best-by dates in their first seasons, and had lost their peak equity much before they did.

     

    Building GEC fiction franchises is still a great idea. But GECs are currently missing this trick. Stories much be imagined and developed in seasons. But that would mean taking a seasonal break at a cliffhanger moment, when the story is perhaps peaking. In a largely risk-averse category, I won’t place my bets on that happening in a hurry.

     

  • Positive action on the sports and entertainment front herald happy tidings, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Shailesh Kapoor: August Diaries: Cautiously Cheerful

    Shailesh KapoorBy Shailesh Kapoor

     

    In these times of the pandemic, there isn’t much to differentiate one month from another. But the month of August brought some cheer in its first week, with some laudable performances from Indian athletes at the Tokyo Olympics, none less than the incredible result from the men’s javelin event, where Neeraj Chopra achieved what was unthinkable till even a few months ago.

     

    The Indian Olympics performance sent brands into a tizzy. Moment marketing is the new buzzword, but it went a little too far this time, and PV Sindhu’s representatives rightly stepped in to question if brands are using moment marketing as a backdoor access to celebrity endorsers, without spending any endorsement fee at all. It’s an important positive development, and sportstars outside cricket will benefit from the initiative Sindhu has taken on their behalf.

     

    The seven Indian medals at the Olympics also helped the government, including the Prime Minister, deliver more cheerful messaging. I may be stretching the idea a bit, but how the PM engaged with the athletes this month may be one of the reasons why his Approval Ratings have shown a positive trend this month.

     

    It’s also been a month of some good action on the entertainment front. The Hindi GEC category has gone into a post-lockdown overdrive, with 18 new launches this month, including some high-profiles ones like Balika Vadhu 2 and a new season of Kaun Banega Crorepati. August 15, usually known for its predictable patriotism-led programming, saw a 12-hour grand finale that brought a long but noteworthy season of Indian Idol to an end.

     

    But all is not good on the television front, as the big TV networks continue to battle NTO 2.0 in the courts, hoping for some relief from TRAI’s arbitrary interventions that continue to distract and damage the television business.

     

    Meanwhile, the action on the streaming side continues, with the launch of Bigg Boss OTT on Voot earlier this month. A pre-TV season online is a great idea for a show like Bigg Boss. But what excited me the most here is the branding of the show itself. The word “OTT” has finally made it to the consumer lexicon officially. The category is called “streaming” across most markets in the world, but India often finds its unique nomenclature, and OTT is one such.

     

    The movie theatres are reopening, and the coming months should see new releases trickle in, starting with Akshay Kumar’s Bell Bottom this weekend. It may take another couple of months for some sense of momentum on the theatrical front, and Diwali may be a good tipping point to kick off the post-pandemic journey of the Indian (especially Hindi) theatrical business, which has been on pause mode for more than a year now.

     

    An Indian media diary for this month cannot be complete without a mention of the memorable Lord’s Test that concluded this Monday. The last day saw India pull off one of its most unlikely Test wins, and with some aggression and attitude to boot. Every event of this nature is now associated with the idea of a “Naya Bharat”, an evolving and youthful face of India, an articulation that finds its most definitive in the 2019 blockbuster Uri: The Surgical Strike. Which remind me that August also saw a channel launch with that proposition: Times Now Navbharat HD.

     

    Be it the Indian national team or the mega Indian league of franchises, cricket fans have a packed calendar ahead of them, with the IPL and the T20 World Cup after the remaining three Tests in England.

     

    Let’s hope that the sword hanging over our heads, called the Third Wave, does not spoil what looks like an exciting quarter ahead for the entertainment business in India.

     

  • To select celebrity endorsers best suited to a brand

    Ormax Media launches celebrity selection tool for marketers

    By Our Staff

     

    Media consulting firm Ormax Media has launched its celebrity endorsement selection tool Ormax Celeble. The tool will help brand owners select a brand endorser whose profile and personality matches the desired brand personality the best.

     

    With a database on personality traits of more than 500 celebrities, Ormax Celeble uses analytics to help brands identify the celebrities that fit their brand’s desired profile the best, enabling them to make smart brand endorser choices.

     

    Speaking about Ormax Celeble, Shailesh Kapoor, Founder & CEO – Ormax Media said: “There is enough research available Internationally to prove that a good brand endorser can help a brand grow significantly because of the association between the brand and the celebrity, while a poor choice of brand endorser will not just be a waste of money, but also potentially dangerous for brand development. In India, brand endorser decisions are largely driven by gut and even personal taste of brand owners, with very little relevant data backing such choices. Ormax Celeble is a data-centric analytics tool that can help look at their endorsement options that their gut will often miss. We have a huge database of more than 500 national and regional celebrities across domains for brands to tap into”.

     

    Ormax Celeble is Ormax Media’s second tool for brand marketers. Ormax Mpact, launched in 2013, helps brand managers and media agencies evaluate the effectiveness and ROI of a high-impact campaign, marketing innovation or sponsorship.

     

  • The stand-out India story from these Olympics has been the performance of both the hockey teams, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Phir Dil Do Hockey Ko 2.0

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorThe summer Olympics are in their last leg, and it has been one of the better editions for India, with the possibility of an all-time best haul of seven or eight medals at the time of writing this column. India won two silver and four bronze medals at London 2012, but the follow-up at Rio was filled with disappointment. Two medals came only at the fag end of the games, from PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik.

     

    The stand-out India story from these Olympics has been the performance of both the hockey teams. The men’s team won the bronze in a creditable performance over two weeks. It’s the first hockey medal at the Olympics for India since Moscow 1980. And the Moscow games were heavily curtailed in terms of country participation on account of the Cold War.

     

    Since 1980, it has been frustrating to watch the Indian team, in what is the unofficial national sport of the country, fall by the wayside, not just because of rise of other teams like Australia and Germany, but equally because of the administrative mess that all Indian sports except cricket seem to find themselves in, more often than not.

     

    The last few years have been better, with some resurgence in performance, a younger team, and more intent from the federation. But hockey has slipped out of public attention, and there is absolutely no viewership or sponsor interest to speak of. It’s now well-known that both the men’s and women’s hockey teams were sponsored by the Naveen Patnaik-led Odisha Government, an unusual scenario in sports, to say the least.

     

    Ormax has been tracking India’s most popular sportstars for three years now, and not once has a hockey player featured in the monthly Top 20 list. There were two attempts by Hockey India to take the league format in hockey. Both leagues struggled to survive, and the last edition was held four years ago in 2017.

     

    Unlike some of the other sports in which India does well, like shooting (though the Indian shooting performance at Olympics at Rio and now Tokyo has been a letdown to say the least), hockey is a fairly watchable TV sport. But you need good, consistent performances by the national team to build media conversation and audience interest. And that has been missing all these years. Till this week, that is.

     

    The story of the women’s team, which finished fourth this morning in a tight bronze medal contest, has been even more incredible. Till this week, the Indian women’s hockey team has never been a force to reckon with, struggling to qualify for the major tournaments, or finishing at the bottom spots when they could. Even at these Olympics, the first few games followed the same trend. But once the team scraped through to the quarter-finals, they got their big chance to get noticed. The 1-0 quarter-final win against Australia, arguably the most-fancied team in women’s hockey, will always count as a defining moment in women’s hockey in India.

     

    In 2010, when the men’s hockey World Cup was held in New Delhi, the title sponsors Hero Honda crafted a memorable campaign that said ‘Phir Dil Do Hockey Ko’, using cricket stars to endorse the sport. But India only finished eighth in that World Cup. And that’s where that winning idea succumbed to the reality check of the team just not being good enough. The story is different now, and hence, the next 4-5 years can be very exciting for Indian hockey.

     

    So, what do we expect to change? A lot, actually. The most obvious change will be sponsor interest in the sport, which in turn would lead to the resurrection of the hockey league in India. Once that happens, the sport will have a well-packaged audience window to exploit, much like Kabaddi has managed over the last decade. That should set the ball rolling. It’s now for the federation and our ever-interfering-in-sports governments to back the sport and ensure that the potential is indeed realised.

     

     

  • The next 17 days, which includes three weekends, will be a treat for all sportslovers, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Shailesh Kapoor: Games People Play

    Shailesh KapoorBy Shailesh Kapoor

     

    The Olympics are finally here. They have been a year late, and the pandemic, along with the controversy around the event being held despite the pandemic, has taken away some of the sheen from the games. But from today, the real action will start, and everything else will be reduced to a backdrop.

     

    The Olympic games have never been a big media event in India traditionally. In a one-sport country, the idea of a multi-sport event is not alluring as such, unless it’s packaged with patriotism. But that’s been hard to do, given India’s poor show at the games over the years. Since 2008, when Abhinav Bindra won the country’s first (and till date, the only) individual gold medal, we didn’t have much to show at all, except the hockey glory from many decades ago. Since 2008, we have at least been in medal reckoning. The total count of 11 (one gold, three silver and seven bronze) across 2008, 2012 & 2016 may not be much, but it’s far higher than those growing up in the 80s or the 90s would have bargained for.

     

    Lack of performance over the years has also meant low audience interest, leading to low viewership. And it doesn’t help that the peak action timings generally tend to be odd, often well into the night or very early in the morning.

     

    It’s difficult to say how the Indian performance will pan out at this year’s games. There hasn’t been much build-up in the media, with the focus largely being on the pandemic. What we know is that India has sent 125 athletes across 18 sports, the highest-ever on both counts. The sizeable Athletics squad, 26 in number, came as a pleasant surprise to me. But the most realistic medal chances will be in the sport of Shooting, where we have been at par with the best in the world.

     

    Sony has a good coverage plan, with 20 live streams on Sony LIV. That creates more choice for Olympics geeks like me, though watching sport via a streaming app is generally a dodgy experience. Even if you have moved all your content consumption to streaming, including watching linear television on the respective apps, live sports still looks and feels better on TV.

     

    The next 17 days, which includes three weekends, will be a treat for all sports lovers. Even though the entire action will unfold without any spectators in the various stadia in Tokyo, the indomitable spirit of the Olympics – Citius, Altius, Fortius – will take over, nevertheless.

     

    If you want to discover the true power of sport, there isn’t a better opportunity, than to sink your teeth into the Olympics.

     

  • Shailesh Kapoor highlights five of them that most of us encounter in A&M-land

    The Age of False Binaries

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorSimplification is always tempting, and generally a good thing too. But increasingly, the world around us is showing a tendency to over-simplify narratives. With attention spans reducing, nuance is becoming an elusive idea too. And a direct offshoot of this socio-political trend is the emergence of false binaries: a debate that’s framed as either-or, with no room in the middle.

     

    If you carefully notice, false binaries are all around us. And the discourse around the Indian media industry has not been spared either. Here are five false binaries that you are likely to encounter at some time or the other if you are associated with this industry.

     

    Progressive v/s Regressive
    This is perhaps the oldest false binary in the industry, dated back to a time when the term ‘false binary’ was not even in vogue. It’s a peculiar way in which the Indian media, especially the English press, has framed the debate around our mainstream GEC content for more than two decades now. If a show is not proactively progressive, it must be termed “regressive”. The lens applied is very urban and elitist, which makes this binary particularly flawed. Here’s a column I wrote on this topic back in 2014.

     

    TV v/s OTT
    This false binary mushroomed about three-four years ago, with the rise of streaming platforms in India. Health warning: Discussing this topic can be a yawn-including exercise in pointlessness. Pitching two media as different as chalk and cheese, against each other, and suggesting that only one will eventually survive, reflects poor understanding of the video content market in India. TV has not only survived through these last few years, it has grown stronger. Neither have the number of TV households come down, nor has the time spent watching TV reduced, since the emergence of OTT platforms. The reason is simple: Television viewing is the only daily family habit in India today, and its existence is secure till the institution of family remains relevant in India. Which is at least another 25 years, if not more.

     

    Nationalistic v/s Anti-National
    This is a news nuance that we must learn to live with in the current times. If you question anything that’s even remotely ‘patriotic’ in its framing, you must be an anti-national. This false binary plays out every night on news channel debates, and is now acquiring bizarre proportions and mutating into variants too, like pro-Hindutva versus anti-Hindi. In a recent debate on the Ayodhya Ram Mandir land ‘scam’ on a Hindi news channel, a political spokesperson from the Opposition was chided by the anchor: “How much did you donate for the construction of the temple? And if you have not, what right do you have to talk about it?” To come up with something as twisted as that extempore on a live debate takes some special talent!

     

    Data v/s Gut
    As someone who uses data to aid informed decision-making for media companies over the last 13 years, one has learnt to live with this rather tempting-to-believe false binary. Gut (or instinct or experience) is a powerful thing. A good instinct can often be key to how well one can contextualise and use data to one’s advantage. Data, when combined with a good gut, is a potent tool. Data, with poor gut, can be dangerous. Give three people the same data points at the same time, and meet them one month later to discuss it. The three discussions won’t have much in common. And this is a true story.

     

    Theatrical v/s OTT
    This variant of the TV versus OTT binary is the latest irritant on my list. Every other journalist covering the media sector wants to headline a story on films releasing directly on OTT during the pandemic through the lens of this false binary. OTT platforms are not designed to replicate the outdoor experience offered by cinema. And hence, both will find a place under the sun. The framing of a false binary such as TV vs. OTT or theatrical versus OTT assumes that the consumer has a finite, fixed time to spend on entertainment, and hence, there must be a trade-off. This seemingly-reasonable assumption is not true, but that’s a complex topic for another day.

     

  • Watching his work this weekend could be the best way to remember him, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Dilip Kumar: The Original ‘Thespian’

    Courtesy: SeniorsToday.in

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorDilip Kumar, arguably Hindi cinema’s greatest actor of all time, passed away earlier this week. The legendary actor had been battling poor health for a while.

     

    If you are born in the 1970s (or later), like me, it is unlikely that you would fully understand Dilip Kumar’s legacy. My first memories of him were from his films in the ’80s, like Kranti, Mashaal, Shakti, Vidhaata and Karma, when he was playing the ‘second generation’. The screen presence was towering, and I couldn’t take my eyes off and actor who had a style so distinctive yet alluring that you wanted to see him more and more. By the time I had watched Saudagar (1990), I was already an ardent admirer.

     

    But it’s much later, in my late 20s, that I started watching Dilip Kumar’s films from the 1950s and the ’60s. Many of them are Black & White, and it took some time (and age) to get used to the idea of enjoying a film without colour. It was more like a ‘study’, because it is impossible to fathom how those films would have played out in the socio-political milieu of the times they came in. He is the original superstar, my dad would often tell me. I learnt the English language word ‘thespian’ because it was often used to describe Dilip Kumar.

     

    Such is the aura around him that even our press has been well-behaved (relatively anyway) over the last three days. Back in 2012, I wrote in this column about how the tributes paid by our electronic media to cinema legends who passed away at that time have been disappointingly trite. That was a period in which we lost Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Yash Chopra in quick succession. If the electronic media’s handling of Dilip Kumar’s demise is more dignified, it is because of the respect and love he enjoyed across sections of the society.

     

    I was hoping someone would actually ‘celebrate’ his great work. When a legend passes away at the age of 98 after battling ill-health for years, grief almost seems like an inappropriate emotion. Dilip Kumar lived his life well, and acted for about 50 years. He has left an enduring legacy that all his fans will be proud of. Could a top news channel not have taken a project to do (at least) a one-hour show that explains the phenomenon called Dilip Kumar to the young audience (under-30) of today, who haven’t experienced it yet? There have been some very good articles online, but they don’t have the reach of mass television.

     

    I’m sure many young people will discover the works of Dilip Kumar now, like I did many years ago. What they will make of his films more than 60-70 years after their release is difficult to say. Some may have seen Mughal-e-Azam anyway. I always recommend Naya Daur as that ‘bridge’ film. It seems young enough even today (though the colour version is not the one I’d recommend).

     

    A legend has passed away, but his legacy will stay forever. Watching his work this weekend could be the best way to remember him.

     

     

  • KBC, Bigg Boss, Indian Idol, Khatron Ke Khiladi, Shark Tank and more… get set for an interesting, and somewhat unpredictable 2021-22 on the Hindi reality shows front, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    The Reality Show Wave is Back!

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorWe missed it in 2020. Because of the pandemic, the lockdown and all the collateral damage that came along, 2020 saw a disruption in the now-familiar annual cycle of non-scripted (reality) shows on Hindi GECs. While reality shows stay on air through the year, it’s the period around June when the action begins to heat up. Channels understandably don’t want their big-ticket non-fiction launches to be drowned in the IPL din. To that extent, July is a good month to spring into action: well after the IPL and well in time for the festive season. Last year, this cycle seemed scattered. But it’s back in 2021.

     

    The usual routine of singing and dance reality shows has been in place anyway. Indian Idol was shaping up to be a memorable season, but its extension during the lockdown has taken a bit of sheen away from it, especially with the change in the jury. But that doesn’t take away from how strong the Indian Idol brand has become in India over the last decade, with each season being arguably better than the one before.

     

    Khatron Ke Khiladi, one of the top-rated shows in the category, is coming with a new season from July 17. The franchise has been a standout one in India, having gained audience acceptance with each passing year, and emerging from its niche proposition of being a show for the youth and the kids to being a family entertainer.

     

    Bigg Boss had a low-key season, and will be hoping for resurgence in 2021-22. A lingering problem with the show is its ageing host. While Salman Khan continues to remain hugely popular among the masses, he’s clearly past his peak popularity phase that was triggered by Dabangg in 2010, and lasted about 5-6 years. His recent films have not done too well, and in the 2020-21 season, even his anchoring on the show seemed a bit jaded, as if he’s bored himself doing the same gig for many years now. A replacement is imminent. The question is one of timing.

     

    KBC, one of my personal favorites, had a misfired season in 2020. The show just didn’t take off, and while it tried to pitch itself around the idea of ‘hope’ in a disease-stricken world, the messaging seemed less organic and more orchestrated. At its core, KBC is not a show about hope, but one about knowledge. And when you are struggling to stay healthy and retain your livelihood, do you really care about knowledge? The next season, whenever it launches, must find a more organic and yet relevant point of connect with its audience.

     

    I was pleasantly surprised by Sony’s recent announcement on Shark Tank India. One wouldn’t associate a show like Shark Tank with the word “mass” or “GEC” in an Indian context. I’m very curious to see how Sony manages to achieve the balance between the format and the wider audience the show would aim to win over. We have seen how Star has struggled with the MasterChef on this count year after year, and seem to have given up that idea altogether now. Let’s hope Sony has some imaginative ideas up its sleeve for the ‘Indianization’ of Shark Tank.

     

    But the best announcement related to reality shows in recent weeks has been the return of the Got Talent format in India. Colors discontinued it a few years ago, and replaced it with homegrown versions that lacked the zing of the original. The globally-successful format has now changed hands, and Sony will be bringing it back soon. When done well, it can be a crackerjack. Even at its best, the Colors show didn’t touch more than 60-70% of the format’s full potential. So, there’s a lot of room for growth here.

     

    There’s also the small matter of when and how Kapil Sharma will return on the television, and though his show is largely scripted, it does fall under the simplistic ‘reality show’ definition in India by exclusion, because it’s not a daily soap!

     

    So, get set for an interesting, and somewhat unpredictable, 2021-22 on the Hindi reality shows front.

     

     

  • Shailesh Kapoor appraises the first quarter of the fiscal year was hit big time by the Second Wave of the pandemic

    June Diaries: Entertainment in Covid Times

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorGoing by official numbers at least, the worst of the second Covid wave in India is now behind us. The wave has scarred many families forever, and with a vaccination programme that is struggling to gather momentum, a third wave is not ruled out by experts. But for now, life goes on, and different states are cautiously opening up in phases.

     

    The April-May period has impacted the Indian entertainment business considerably. Those dependent on advertising revenues suffered more, with even digital advertising showing a sharp drop, judging by industry estimates. But it’s the content side that has been impacted across the board.

     

    With Maharashtra announcing a stringent lockdown, Hindi GEC content production was impacted. Unlike last year, channels could travel to states that have less stringent lockdowns and record there, which they indeed did. At one point in early May, about six Hindi GEC shows had their stories set in a resort. This includes the two big hit shows in the category currently: Anupamaa and Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah. Many others played out of hotels and resorts, but passed them off as homes and kept the story running as normally as they could. Not an easy task, given that almost all shows had a part of their cast unavailable because of a Covid infection.

     

    In the entire months of April and May, there was only one show launch in the Hindi GEC category (Sasural Simar Ka 2 on Colors), an unprecedented low by a wide margin. Regional languages had about four to eight show launches per language over the two months, but that’s lower than their running average too. Under normal circumstances, the IPL cancellation would have been a great opportunity to launch new shows, especially those on the weekend. But then, there would have been no IPL cancellation to begin with, if there was no second wave.

     

    The theatrical business has bled the most over the last 14 months. Theatres will re-open in the coming weeks, though it remains to be seen how many single screens have permanently shut down. The first quarter of this calendar year had seen huge footfalls for the marquee films in Telugu and Tamil languages, and one hopes that sentiment is reflected in the Hindi markets too this summer.

     

    It may seem that all’s well with the streaming category, with more audience locked down at home. But if you notice carefully, the number of launches on the top platforms have reduced. This impact of the constricted content pipeline will continue to be felt over the next six months in both streaming and theatrical sectors.

     

    June has got off to a good start, with a smasher of a show in The Family Man S2. One hopes that it’s a sign of things to come in the coming weeks. The other big event this June is the final of the World Test Championship, where India plays New Zealand from June 18. The event has not been hyped up by the media so far, but wait for another week and you will see it becoming the big distraction from the pandemic, especially if India wins the title.

     

    But keeping nationalism aside, World Test Championship is a great idea, and though the first edition has been curtailed because of the pandemic, it’s great to see it find a logical conclusion, and to see India featuring in the final. One would have liked to see the game being played at a full house at Lord’s, but in these difficult times, an empty stadium at Southampton will do just fine.

     

     

  • But the current crisis has shown how robust some of these publications are. Not for nothing is print the most credible news media in India, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Shailesh Kapoor: Indian News: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

    Shailesh KapoorBy Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Five weeks ago, I wrote in this column about how the coverage of the healthcare and humanitarian crisis that has hit us because of the devastating second COVID wave will be an acid test for Indian television news channels. How they manage to report in this period will have a long-term impact on how television news is perceived in this country.

     

    The update, I’m afraid, is not good. Almost expectedly, most news channels (barring a couple) have pussyfooted their way through this crisis. From blaming the “system”, to looking for “positivity”, they have tried to create stories around the second COVID wave that do everything but call out the Governments (Centre or State) that have botched up.

     

    The ground reportage has been woefully inadequate too. International channels, especially BBC, ran more incisive stories from the ground in India than Indian news channels. Every now and then, the all-too-familiar distraction route has been deployed too, such as doing inconsequential political stories when the healthcare crisis was at its peak early May.

     

    Not that this surprises us anymore. Having resigned to the fate that good old Indian television news will not carry anything of weight, I found myself gravitating towards three sources, more than every before: International media, digital video news and print.

     

    Print, in particular, has seen some quality work exposing the mismatch between reported and actual mortality figures, a glaring discrepancy than Indian TV news channels have barely glossed over. Most of this investigative work has been done by language publications, and it is difficult to track them all. But in particular, Gujarati newspapers like Sandesh and Divya Bhaskar have been applauded for their stellar reportage, where they have tracked hospitals and crematoriums extensively to conclude that the actual mortality in the state may be as high as 10X the official figures.

     

    In a rare gesture of acknowledgement of another medium’s good work, NDTV India’s anchor Ravish Kumar spoke about Sandesh’s coverage extensively in his show last night, even interviewing the publication’s Rajkot editor, and admitting to him that his company has managed what most TV channels and English & Hindi newspapers have not.

     

    Language print has never been a hot topic of discussion in mainline media circles in India, simply because unfamiliarity with languages curtails reach, not to speak about the unsaid hierarchy of languages in the Indian news industry. But the current crisis has shown how robust some of these publications are. Not for nothing is print the most credible news media in India.

     

    Digital coverage by some Indian platforms, none less than the Barkha Dutt-run Mojo Story, has tried to compensate for the absence of mainline news channels on the ground, especially in mofussil towns and in rural India. Yet, for every such digital platform, there will be another trying to peddle a narrative that suits Government of the day. Unlike TV channels, digital news platforms often run as bootstrapped businesses, and have little means of marketing themselves to expand their reach. They have to rely upon organic referrals, and the good work in the pandemic period should, hopefully, get them plenty of referrals.

     

    Another digital platform that’s worth applauding is the TV Today-owned The Lallantop. Even as the much-larger TV channels from the group, including the giant Aaj Tak, play ‘safe’, The Lallantop has done some compelling stories from the ground. It amuses me that it’s the same parent organization after all. With no news ratings for almost nine months now, what stops the organization from taking the same approach for their big TV channels? Some of the video stories run by The Lallantop are more than worthy of being prime-time stories on Aaj Tak.

     

    When the Government is obsessed with its image and the narrative, than with reality itself, it’s the media’s job to counter that obsession with hard facts. More power to journalists and mediahouses that have taken on this baton. You may be in a minority, but history will remember that when India’s mainstream media let go of its power to make a difference, you were there!

     

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