TRPs = Serial Killers
As a viewer of the serials on Indian TV, I have come to realize that the concepts of shows on the Indian telly need some drastic changes. In India, the success of a TV show depends on the dreaded word - TRPs. If the TRPs are good, the show runs on for years with twists and turns and deaths and rebirths! 😲 Never mind if the story line is crap with a lot of connived impossible situations! If a woman is tortured by her husband, in-laws, and society, the audience laps it up, the TRPs go through the roof, and of course, the show goes on and on dishing out more torture. 🤢 If the girls wear skimpy clothes and the boys bare muscles and a lot of bad language used, well, it clicks with the youth and is a roaring success! 😉
What if the story stays simple and everyday kind with situations one might encounter in real life with lessons on how to deal with such situations? It is considered low profile and not worth the trouble! Many a show starts off with such promises and viewers like me who want to watch something sensible get hooked to the show. But down the road, we notice strange things happening - the story takes a sudden U turn, unsavory and unwanted characters appear from nowhere, and the original flavor is lost. 😕 Why does this happen? Because the TRPs are low and the channel sends warnings to the producers and creatives of the show to add masala to increase TRPs or else! 😲 But does it really do any good? No, because the original fans are disgusted and give up on the show and it fails to attract new viewers half way through the story! The TRPs dip even lower and finally the show is laid to rest with a hotch-potch ending which leaves many a fan in tears! 😭
It is high time that entertainment industry thought of entertaining all kinds of viewers, not just the kinds who want melodrama and bloodshed and twisted storylines! 😛 While I agree that we watch TV for relaxation, it is also an important media which reaches almost every household in the country and it should be used for raising the awareness of the public towards certain social evils! So along with the laughter programs and certain reality shows (but which ones really educate nowadays? ), we also need good stories to be told in a convincing way. Stories are told to little children to impress certain morals on them; in a similar way, good stories need to be told on a media like the television to impart certain lessons to the viewing public.
Considering TRPs as a measure of success (I fail to understand how a miniscule percentage of households are representative of the nation's voice in an overpopulated one like ours ), many a good story bites the dust without making an impact. The best way to beat this system would be to change the strategy altogether. Let us have stories which are drawn up and fixed right at the beginning of the show. Let us have short serials, which run only for a few months – the shelf life of a serial should not be greater than 6 months. This would avoid a lot of heartache for the fans, as the story is fixed and so are the characters, and the Damocles sword of TRPs need not be hanging over the show deciding its fate. 😃 New characters and twists and turns need not be added midway through the show for garnering TRPs. Once it is known that the show is for a fixed period of time, TRPs would lose their importance, and good stories can be shown without worries. All kinds of stories can also be shown and audience can pick and choose what they want to see. This way all kinds of viewers would find something to satisfy them and the popularity of TV as a media would only go up and so would its importance in influencing the society! 😊
In fact one of the best serials I have watched was Avicharitham (The Unexpected), a Malayalam serial directed by K.K. Rajeev and having just 40 episodes of an hour each. 👍🏼 It had 4 central characters with a few ancillary ones, and I remember being glued to Asianet every evening when it was aired in 2004/2005. The serial highlighted human frailties and the unexpected climax at the end restored one's faith in human nature. 😊 I remember it won many awards, but I wonder how it fared in popularity, but it was one of the best I have watched on the telly! 👏
It is high time that the powers that be of showbiz considered the viewpoints of the audience who watch their shows and put a different kind of system in place for customer satisfaction.Short serials with a fixed storyline right at the beginning would spare a lot of heartache for fans and viewers who mourn the untimely death of their favorite shows at the altar of the TRPs! 😊
Found an interesting article in Times of India.
You are absolutely right. TRP is the cause of death of a good story/serial. For this TRP channels can't stop a serial at the proper time. channels ka kahena hai "aare bhai TRP achcha hai ye serial ko abhi kaise rok sakte hai, story ko gumao, kuch bhi karo TRP achcha hai." and the result death of a good story.😔
Govt soon to form mechanism to monitor TV content: Soni | ||
Indiantelevision.com Team |
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(15 March 2011 4:35 pm) |
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NEW DELHI: The Broadcast Content Complaints Council proposed by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation as the second tier of complaints against television channels will be a 13-member body headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court or High Court. "We are right on the threshold of announcing a self-regulatory mechanism to monitor content on television," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told the Lok Sabha in response to complaints by MPs on vulgarity in TV reality shows. Soni told Parliament today that even as discussions are still on with the IBF to finalise the broad structure on its proposal where the first tier is the broadcaster itself, there was general agreement that the twelve members will include four from among the broadcasters, four will be persons of eminence and repute from outside the industry, and four will be from national statutory commissions.
In the last category, there will be mandatory representation from the National Commission for Women, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes. The
fourth member will be selected for a meeting of the BCCC depending
on the nature of the complaint, to represent other Commissions
like the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, the National
Commission for other Backward Classes, National Commission
for Minorities, and the National Human Rights Commission.
She said it was envisaged that either the Chairperson or a
member of the respective Commission will be represented on
the BCCC.
The BCCC will have the mandate to look into all complaints relating to violation of the Code by entertainment channels, and give suitable directions to concerned channels to modify or withdraw any objectionable content. Since a majority of the members of the BCCC will be drawn from persons of eminence and statutory commissions, she said this mechanism was likely to provide a credible and acceptable self-regulatory mechanism for addressing the issues relating to objectionable content on TV channels. The News Broadcasters Association had earlier set up a similar body under retired Justice J S Verma to examine complaints against news channels. Meanwhile,
Soni said that the Ministry had increased the capacity of
monitoring the TV channels and was now seeing 300 channels
round the clock as compared to 150 some months earlier. |
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Very well written post and awesome title..so true..because of TRPs, very good stories get wrecked..now I am just hoping theat two really good shows, DLMH and Mukti Bandhan don't get wrecked because of this whole TRP thing...yrf shows are good too, they only run for like two months, and leave very nice memories..