The nature of mass entertainment in India is family-centric. But does it mean that entertainment begins and ends with daily soaps everyday from 7 to 11 pm, asks A. L. CHOUGULE.
If you tune in to any of the top three entertainment channels – Star Plus, Zee TV or Colors – andsearch for some variety entertainment, chances are you will be completely disappointed. The reason isthey all air fiction shows in daily soap format, Monday to Saturday, give and take a seasonal non-ndat 10.30 pm; earlier Colors ran Bigg Boss from September to January.
Otherwise, there is no respite from daily soaps from 7 to 11 pm; Star Plus and Zee go a step further by airing dailies even before sunset between 6 and 7 pm. The case isn’t different with other general entertainment channels GECs). Life OK and SAB do the same, though both air less number of fiction shows, while Sony deviates on weekends and kick-starts its original prime time fiction entertainment at 7.30 pm.
Six years ago Sony had brought in a new programming head to revamp the channel. He was Gurdeep Bhangoo, who had quit his job as executive producer and head of BBC’s Asian programming unit to join Sony in 2009. In an interview with this writer Gurdeep not only had expressed surpriseabout samenessin every mass channel’s prime time programming but was even more surprised to note sameness and blatant aping in GECs’ programming. What he failed to understand was how viewers could be fed with same kind of shows from 7 to 11 pm on daily basis.
That isn’t the case with TV programming in developed counties which has been and still is
the reference point for Indian television. In UK for instance, soaps are the bread and butter of commercial television but, as Gurdeep explained, “You don’t have more than two soaps which go on and on for several years. There is lot of variety in programming like weekly series on crime, hospital, documentaries, food shows, two-part special fiction, travelogues, music programmes and so on. Soaps are major assets of television in the UK and other shows are weaved around these main pillars. A lot of thinking and planning goes behind building every slot on each day depending upon the availability of audience and its mood. Also, fiction in UK costs more than other genres whereas in India it is the reverse. The nature of GEC in India is family-centric and entertainment-focused. Here it begins and ends with the same things. It’s a lazy way of working if you pack all your slots with same kind of shows. There has to be a room for experimentation.”
Indians have huge appetite for television, something similar to the Asians in UK who watch lot of television. While bulk of audience for general entertainment in UK is 45 or 50-plus, in India the core audience comes in age group of 25 to 40. In terms of maturity and size Indian and UK markets are quite different – Indian market is young and huge, UK is smaller but more than 60 years old. Indian market is also more commercially driven – because of its size – as compared to UK.
However, broadcasters in UK do not encourage sameness in programming or aping; in India both are abundant. Whether in UK or India, according to Gurdeep, variety in genres is very important to engage audience. But in India, mainly one genre (and its sub-genres) occupies 90 per cent of programming time. Incidentally, Gurdeep’s efforts to revamp Sony’s programming failed and he was replaced by a hardcore GEC programmer within a year.
Variety and experimentation were key words in programming in the 90s.Love stories, comedies, family dramas, crime, suspense, thrillers, horror and one-off episodic shows, singing and dance competitions and game shows were order of the day.Till a decade ago, things were not as bad as they are now. Flash back to the days when fiction programming changed from weeklies to dailies. During initial period, dailies occupied limited time slots from Monday to Thursday; the rest were filled with one-hour weeklies and other shows.
Weekends too had a variety comprising fictional historical, singing and dance shows. A few years down the line, dailies were not only extended to five days but were given all prime time slots, while song-n-dance shows became weekend fixture. As if that wasn’t enough, one hour maha episodes of popular dailies became an excuse for channels to offer more fiction on Saturdays.
While the maha episodes gradually died a natural death, lately dailies have now been extended to Saturdays as well, thus killing little bit of variety that was available on weekends. Not that reality shows have been given a complete send off; they are there but few in numbers. What’s the rationale behind oversupply of fiction and overloading viewer with one genre? One reason, according to producers and industry analysts, is viewer’s stickiness to fiction. There is no doubt that viewers connect to fiction better than reality shows for obvious reason – fiction is habit forming because of character-driven dramatic story-telling.
Not that daily soaps deliver great numbers but, channels feel, they bring in enough viewers to keep their viewership share healthy. Moreover, they cost much less than reality shows, while they deliver almost similar numbers as non-fiction shows. The problem with non-fiction shows is that they have outlived their shelf-life; at least for now because of seasonal overkill as almost all reality shows have had six to seven seasonal runs or more.
Most channels haven’t looked beyond their stock shows. Instead of developing or sourcing new formats, channels have instead relied on fiction to keep the fire burning. Any wonder, why mass entertainment space is stagnant, while TV universe is expanding?
