Tag: TV TRAIL

By Shailesh Kapoor

Character popularity is now well known to be singularly important driving force towards programme loyalty. In the last of the yearenders in this column, here’s the list of the top 10 Hindi GEC characters (including non-fiction) for 2015. This list is based entirely on the results of Ormax Characters India Loves, an ongoing survey that polls more than 35,000 Hindi GEC viewers over the year across more than 20 markets.

10. Maharana Pratap (Sony): Warrior portrayals hold intrinsic appeal, yet they remain largely an under-served genre on Indian television and even cinema. With Bajirao Mastani succeeding at the box-office, we can expect more warrior ‘biopics’ on the celluloid. On television, Maharana Pratap kept the genre’s flag flying through the year, though with a lot less intensity by the time the year ended.

9.Salman Khan (Bigg Boss – Colors): He had a great year at the movies, with probably his best film in the last decade (BajrangiBhaijaan). But for many television audiences, Salman Khan’s primary identity is that of the Bigg Boss host. Khan has been often accused of taking sides on the show, but even his hardest critics cannot fault his commitment that comes shining through every weekend.

8. Chakor (Udaan – Colors): Chakor’s character lost considerable steam during the year, starting the year in the Top 5 but ending it outside the top 20.With innocence being a scarce commodity in adult characters on television these days, child protagonists tend to stand out even more. But only till they don’t start behaving like adults!

7. Pragya (Kumkum Bhagya – Zee TV): KumkumBhagya is emerging as a long warhorse for Zee TV, and much credit should go to its lead pair played by SritiJha (Pragya) and Shabbir Ahluwalia (Abhi). As the year closed, Pragya grew to an even stronger position,  signaling a good 2016 for this popular character.

6. Akshara (Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai– Star Plus):It’s been seven years since she first went on-air. Her character journey over years has mirrored various life-stages and challenges Indian women would tend to face in their life. In the largely-unrealworld of television soaps, Akshara has managed to infuse her share of relatability and warmth for many viewers.

5. Sandhya (Diya Aur Baati Hum–Star Plus):Between them, Sandhya and Akshara represent two facets of the Hindi GEC heroine. Sandhya is a woman of aspirations, but one who strives to balance her work and her family in her journey, while Akshara is a nurturer at heart, willing to let go for others. Between them, Star Plus has a strong 9-10pm slot that’s currently their prime-time pivot.

4. Ashok (Chakravartin Ashok Samrat – Colors): Another warrior prince story that was waiting to be told on the small screen. Aided by good casting and production, Ashok emerged as a strong character challenging the dominance of female protagonists in the GEC space. Can we now have a PeshwaBajirao show on TV, please?

3. Kapil Sharma (Comedy Nights With Kapil–Colors):The comedian dominated the non-fiction list in 2015, no different from what he managed in 2014 and much of 2013. He’s Colors’ fourth entry in this list, and the combination of Salman Khan, Chakor, Ashok and Kapil Sharma accurately captures the formula behind the channel’s success. In 2016, Sharma will move to Sony, his original home from Comedy Circus. He’s come in for criticism on various things, ranging from misogyny (on the show) to unprofessionalism (off the show). 2016 could be a defining year for Sharma, at the end of which he would either emerge stronger or begin to fade out.

2. Jethalal (Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah – SAB): SAB TV remains a one-show channel and yet a strong force to reckon. Jethalal (played by Dilip Joshi) is the centerpiece around which this show continues to thrive, now for seven and a half years. The ratio of Jethalal’s popularity among male audiences to female audiences is a staggering 8.2, highlighting the dichotomy of our mass television content, which is family viewing in practice, but often not in spirit.

1. Ishita (Yeh Hai Mohabbatein–Star Plus):Yeh Hai Mohabbatein combines various genres and sub-genres into a unique show. It has romance, inter-cultural conflicts, social issues, family and a lot more. It has even ventured into the supernatural space recently, as if to tick that pending box. But at the core of this huge success remain its leads Ishita (Divyanka Tripathi) and Raman (Karan Patel). Her motherly love is the central quality that makes her no. 1, especially because it’s love for a ‘daughter’ she’s not given birth to.

What started as an experiment about a year ago has now gained in size and momentum. Hindi GEC fiction, often criticized for being behind times, is going through a phase that’s taken the viewers by surprise. It’s a phase when some of the top serials are relying on the supernatural – ghosts, spirits, black magic – to drive eyeballs.

Now, this should not make much sense. Till not too long ago, the genre was understood as one that connects the ordinary Indian women to the world outside, giving her the confidence to learn what she otherwise can’t. What was routinely called “regressive” in the media was termed positive and confidence-building by the target audience. Shows that helped women navigate their relationships better were runaway hits. Where does supernatural even feature in all this? Channels may choose to put it on-air, but why is it actually working?

Simply put, I believe the consumer is “compensating”. She’s compensating herself for having watched one type of content for almost 4-5 years now, which is based on broad constructs of navigating relationships. After a while, you are bound to get a feeling you have seen it all, and every new show is a version of an existing one or a fairly recent hit. Most new launches have not worked and shows launched in 2009-12 continue to rule the roost (an earlier column on this topic is here).

The consumer is looking for variety;for something that she hasn’t seen before. That’s an eternal human need. When Sasural Simar Ka (SSK) first put supernatural content on-air, the viewer saw it with a mix of skepticism and intrigue, sometimes even as unintentional humor. Other shows have tried it subsequently, and recently, none less than Yeh Hai Mohabbatein (YHM), the epitome of contemporary Indian fiction for many audiences, took the supernatural route.

Then we have Naagin, which launched recently as a weekend show and has gone on to become a blockbuster hit in its first three episodes. The snake theme has always interested Indian audiences, be it through cinema, television or cinema on television. Naagin is one of the best-produced Indian content pieces on this subject. With a full-throttle promotional campaign backing it, Naagin’s success is a rare case when all the right boxes get ticked together.

But Naagin is a weekend show and weekend content promise escapism and relaxation. But on weekdays, the infestation of supernatural content is bizarrely interesting. Consumers don’t even know what to call this sub-genre of sorts. They are beginning to assign the word “horror” to it, which captures the ridiculousness of it all.

But if it’s working, it’s working, right? That’s where the note of caution comes in. Both the big shows where it has been used (SSK and YHM) were on-air as regular fiction shows without a supernatural element for almost two years before they experimented with this sub-genre. Some new shows have tried going the supernatural route early in their life stage and it has not worked.

What does this tell us? That if you have characters who are already popular, and the program has built a sizeable audience base around their popularity, a supernatural track can help manage viewer fatigue by providing the unknown element. But it will not help build a viewer base from scratch, unless it’s a show like Naagin, which delivers what it promises – unabashed snake-y entertainment.

Am I suggesting that all hit shows with popular characters will benefit from a supernatural twist? Not really. It’s a fad, and another show or two go this route, we would begin to see viewer rejection instantly. She’s already not impressed, but watching it as something off the beaten path. If it becomes the beaten path itself, then this mini-trend could die a rather abrupt death.

By Shailesh Kapoor

An election results day is here again. And this time, it’s a Sunday too. Bihar elections have been a long-drawn process, with an extended campaign period and five phases of polling. It will all come to an end on November 8, when the counting begins. And it promises to be a cliffhanger.

Election results coverage is perhaps the only form of structured programming of any significance that news channels still have, besides the ‘talking heads locked in a debate’ format. It all gets over in a hurry, but it’s great fun while it lasts, especially if you can identify the best 2-3 news channels on the day and watch within that set, than surfing across more than a dozen of them.

Most exit polls show a close finish for these elections, though Today’s Chanakya, best known for their 300+ forecast for NDA in the 2014 General Elections, is predicting a clear majority for NDA in Bihar. Sunday will be a crucial day for Chanakya too, not just for the two sides locked in a prestigious political battle.

When we shifted from ballot paper to EVMs, the nature of election results programming changed overnight. Till then, anchors had all the time to engage in deep analysis. Psephologists, political experts and politicians themselves with spend considerable time in news studios. No one would be in a hurry. It would all roll out at a leisurely pace, with banter thrown in for good measure. Dr Prannoy Roy shone through those days. This format really suited his personality.

When the EVMs arrived, we witnessed a time collapse. The real action, from the first leads coming in to a clear picture emerging, would take anything from half-hour to maximum two hours, depending on how one-sided or close the battle is.

Most news channels are still experimenting with an ideal programming format that delivers to this T20-type brief. The viewer is bound to focus primarily on the leads window, much like business news channels are watched in market hours. So should one create a show that presents the leads information to viewers in a direct, almost idiot-proof, manner? Or should one create engaging programming for the high-engagement viewers who are deep into politics, and let everyone else focus on the window on the side or the bottom of the screen

This is where anchor personalities can play a significant role. Choices like above are not easy to make. But viewers eventually tend to watch election results programming because they trust certain anchors for their experience and knowledge of the topic. Every anchor has his (rarely ‘her’ in this case) style that he needs to bring to the coverage. Technology and talking-heads are only aids.

Yet, after Dr Roy, we haven’t had a standout election results anchor. Most top news anchors (across languages) do a serviceable job of the day, but there’s no one who will be remembered for his election results coverage before anything else. Perhaps an outcome of the EVMs coming in.

By Shailesh Kapoor

It’s been a week of very little action on-air, but there haven’t been too many dull moments behind the scenes in the television business. As the atmosphere around the release of the first rural ratings three weeks from now builds up, so does the battle for top honours in the Hindi GEC category.

Last week, Colors toppled Star Plus by a single GRP (in Hindi-speaking markets), and this week Star Plus took back the top spot, but with an even smaller gap than last week. We may just be seeing the beginning of a very exciting battle for leadership.

Colors’ media response on taking the top spot last week was restrained, and we did not see any press announcements or electronic mailers. It’s also in line with the BARC India advisory on what constitutes responsible use of data in trade communication.

However, the same cannot be said about many other channels. In a silly trend, we are seeing more and more channels promote their “leadership position” on-air, on their own platform itself. Then, there are ads in mainstream print, not just the pink papers, on a certain channel beating others in its genre. The target group, time bands and the period of reporting are selected to suit the output. Even after that, some of these ads promote “leadership” where the gap is less than 5%. And these are genres where total viewership is so low that even a 20% gap won’t constitute real leadership.

This flow of ratings information in the mainstream media is something we could have done without. The usage of the term “TRP” by consumers has gone up significantly over the last two years. When “iski TRP sabse achhi hai” becomes the reason to like a show or a channel, you know there’s a problem.

The problem is not very different from what happens in Bollywood. Box-office figures are central to a lot of communication around films. Consumers speak about the 100-cr club with a lot of false confidence, emanating from truckloads of media information but no perspective on how to read it.

However, there’s a reason why the TV problem is worse. In films, at least the numbers being discussed have a physical meaning. They are in Indian Rupees after all. In TV, no one outside the media industry (and some would say, many within it too) knows how to read the ratings data. It’s just a notion, and hence, it is easy to be misdirected by what one sees and reads.

Once in a while, you see a genuine e-mailer based on ratings data that makes you go: “Whoa, that’s some achievement”. But in the clutter of many claims and counter-claims, they just become one of the many things being said.

But while one can debate the idea of good trade communication vs. poor trade communication, there cannot be much debate against the merits of sparing the end consumer of information on TV ratings.

They, the end consumers, are the ratings themselves. If they start watching something because it rates well, we can be caught in an infinite loop of silliness.

By Shailesh Kapoor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Shailesh Kapoor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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