Why no one is watching Indian television anymore
A couple of weeks ago, I requested my son to kindly unplug his Xbox from the TV so I could, maybe, you know, watch some myself? Not only did he refuse to unplug it, but he gave me a kindly lecture - the kind of sermon only teenagers are able to administer their technologically-wary parents - on how his generation would not accept control of being told what to watch and when. He then referred me to the internet, where via means of several apps and sites and pay per view and YouTube, pretty much anything you *decide* to watch is made available. "Take control of what you watch," he said, haughtily, leaving me aghast at my submission to devious mind control. Never again, I swore, and have not switched on the television for pre-prepared programming since.
This afternoon, I met a television producer returning off a meeting with a channel. S/He/It had just been told, amongst other things, that s/he/it needed to cater to the masses more, and was frustrated by the fact that s/he/it was told this by people who clearly watch a better quality of product themselves. So while an Anand Mahindra and Mukesh Ambani back the Epic channel, clearly world travellers and erudite businessmen themselves, and might we add with well-schooled children who, if they are half as saucy as mine, surely don't allow them to watch what could be considered programming largely lacking in production values, why churn this stuff out then to an audience that is increasingly finding that better options are available to them online or in compact mobile formats? Entire generations of worldwide award-winning television shows are consumed by a demographic that doesn't have the patience to wait for a channel to decide to catch up. The "we're giving the masses what works" formula, clearly isn't cutting it. The horrific inside figures that has television execs chewing their nails, is a 115 per cent loss in viewership for some shows.
The method they are adopting to remedy that is literally as simple as summoning people back to the TV, the producer explained: Television shows are watched in India with the family and not alone. Someone's making rotis for dinner, someone's doing homework, someone's just come home from work, and two people are multitasking in front of the TV whether that's shelling peas or eating. Which is why Ekta Kapoor's shows have now taken to introducing loud noises in the show itself. The "dhadam dhadam" sound, the producer explained, is more to summon the woman cooking in the kitchen to ask "what happened?" than to illustrate an essential point in the show itself. In this fashion, what is consequently written into the show to boost the TRPs is an inflatable swimming float, and has nothing to do with the requirements of the show itself. In short, the television show is not taught to swim, but is given props to keep it buoyant for a while.
Television in India, unmindful of the way in which it is leaking viewing masses, is plugging gaps with immediacies that do not remedy the long-term viewership issue. Leaks are occurring, according to television insiders, due to censorship - the bleeping of words, the cropping of scenes available in totality online, a desperate clutch hold on existing mass viewership bases that conform to one specific demographic, and this inability, or refusal, to relate to a new audience that access the internet and a wider world of viewing far more freely than any previous generation.
What will stem the flow then? "Digital," the producer says. With Netflix coming in next year and digital platforms rising to adapt to television viewing - Ronnie Screwvala is launching Arre, a digital platform for customised videopods, with Ajay Chacko and B Saikumar later this month - it will be game set and match for television channels that have been content to claim that they are giving the masses what they want. Oh no sir, it's the masses telling you what they want. Schoolboys aren't so obedient as to take notes anymore. They're talking now. Hope the channels are listening.