The youth wants original content, not remakes, Actors open up!!

At an event hosted by The India Diaries in association with Door No. 1, actors, producers and screenwriters like Anchal Sabharwal, Ashiesh Roy, Nivedita Basu, Roopal Tyagi, Priya Malik, Priya Wal, Sushant Singh, Renu & Vishal Watwani opened up about the happenings of the Indian TV industry, the changes, the trends and the gaps between the makers and the public.

On being asked why the young audience is shifting away from mainstream television and how one can get them back, actor turned screenwriter Vishal Watwani says "If you want to get the youth back, give them original content. They don't want remakes of shows that they've already watched. The reason why they're shifting to digital is because it gives them a plethora of relatable content."

Actor and the secretary of CINTAA, Sushant Singh also says that if one wants to make youth-based shows with fresh, young and edgy content, they should accept the fact that the TRPs wouldn't be great. If money is a motivation, one should stick to dailies, but if you want to get back the young brigade, the content has to be on point.

Actress Priya Wal shared her experience of going to channels with original content created by her only to get rejected because the channels had their rigid ideas about the shows that they wanted to make

In the lack of transparency, and a rating system that is extremely biased yet believed in, the content that is being served to the audience is deteriorating each passing day.

"There's barely any research on the maker's side if we're given a subject to produce. The rigidity in the system barely allows that. There are loopholes but we have to work and create meaningful content around it." Says producer Nivedita Basu.

On hosting the event, Sulagna Chatterjee, the founder of The India Diaries says "There is a huge and visible gap between the urban audience and the content creators. Through this event, I wanted to understand what is going wrong, and how we can right the wrongs. The audience needs to know that the industry isn't how it looks from outside and that often so, the producers themselves have no choice or power over what they create."

The coming years seems bright for the digital space, but we can only wait and hope that mainstream TV grows beyond saas-bahu dramas.