Reality bites into TV pie

  • | Saturday | 22nd July, 2017

"The Bigg Boss format has shaken the market out of its complacency," says Vishawanth, also the founder-CEO of TVnews4U. It hit 3.4 million impressions in its launch episode, according to television ratings agency, Broadcast India Research Council (Barc). "The people on the show are famous, but living like I did in the village, with no TV or phone," she says. At Star Vijay, business head Krishnan Kutty hints that there are a couple of big reality show formats in the pipeline. In 2013 though, the Sun group's Surya TV aired a similar show', 'Malayalee House', which was a hit.

Harita DL cannot tell you why she is addicted to 'Bigg Boss' — "Nothing seems to really happen on the show and still, I need to watch every episode," says the 22-year-old software engineer, who watches the reality show on her smartphone or laptop during her two-hour train commute to work. "It's not just me, I happened to look up from my phone one day and saw Kamal Haasan's face (the show's host) on everyone else's phone as well in the ladies' coupe," she adds.In her one-room Velachery house, Chitara, a domestic help, and her children rush home for 'Big Bazaar' (what she calls 'Bigg Boss'), which has taken over their conversations. "The people on the show are famous, but living like I did in the village, with no TV or phone," she says. Her mother though is not amused —"She misses her favourite serial, which comes on at the same time," says Chitara, but adds that she is now planning an internet connection at home so everyone's happy. "We can watch the programme on the net, she can watch it on TV," she says.The three-week-old show's gone viral through tweets, memes, gifs, the latest being a # campaign to save Oviya (one of the contestants) from the other "anti-social elements" in the house.The Tamil edition of 'Bigg Boss' — a reality show based on the original Dutch 'Big Brother' format where contestants are isolated from the rest of the world, getting evicted until only one remains — was launched this June. It hit 3.4 million impressions in its launch episode, according to television ratings agency, Broadcast India Research Council (Barc). "It's unlike watching a melodramatic soap, only it's real life. It feels real. I think that is what makes it more appealing to people like me," says Harita, who adds that launching it on a digital platform has also made access easier.But while on the one hand, the show — now on a third of its way to its 100-day mark — has created an unprecedented high rating for Star Vijay, the channel on which it airs, it has also brought the focus back on the realm of possibilities beyond the daily soap market.One can possibly expect a proliferation of such shows now, says TV analyst Vijay Vishwanath. In 2005, to compete with the 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' quiz format, Sun TV launched the game show 'Thanga Vettai', which was a hit," he says, adding that it led to a spurt of similar shows on Tamil channels.Then came the burst of song and dance talent shows, which season after season tried to scour for talent to score on ratings. Stand-up comedy followed soon after with almost every channel from Zee Tamil to Sun, Raj and Vijay hosting them.While executives at Sun say the channel wants to stick to fiction format where it is a clear market leader, a freelance production executive says there have been rumours within the industry about bringing in more reality show content. At Star Vijay, business head Krishnan Kutty hints that there are a couple of big reality show formats in the pipeline. "The Bigg Boss format has shaken the market out of its complacency," says Vishawanth, also the founder-CEO of TVnews4U. "While TV serials and the song-dance hunts draw in older crowds a show like 'Bigg Boss' has lured the digital audience back to TV viewing," he says, adding the next big wave is more TV channels bringing in web content creators into the television market. Taking a step in that direction, this June, Put Chutney, Culture Machine's Tamil digital media brand, partnered Vijay TV to produce hour long episodes for the show titled 'Intensive Comedy Unit'.Although Barc data shows that as always Sun TV is the market leader in terms of television content with its serials like 'Nandini' and 'Deiva Magal' holding top spots in terms of programming, an executive at the channel on condition of anonymity says the newest reality format has 'shaken the giant'. The channel, says the executive, was initially offered 'Bigg Boss' but rejected it because of production cost — an episode can cost `30 lakh or more, while the average pay out from a non-fiction show in the south is a third of that amount. In 2013 though, the Sun group's Surya TV aired a similar show', 'Malayalee House', which was a hit. But Star Vijay's gamble seems to have paid of for now as the channel has hit its highest gross rating point in 20 years.

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