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Voting Right?
(India Today Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)On Zee TV's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2005, 8,000 votes came from a single phone number in Gujarat.In Nach Baliye, Rajiv and Delnaz Paul's relatives gave them immense support-translated, that means over 2,000 SMS votes.
In the piano rounds of Indian Idol 2, the margins between contestants were so narrow that the judges' favourite Dilpreet Kaur missed getting into the galas by less than 300 votes.
In Fame Gurukul, Qazi amassed 1.5 crore votes while Ruprekha, considered a far better singer, had less than a crore votes.
When was the last time you saw a reality TV show and agreed with the verdict? Chances are, you can't remember. Reality show results now resemble Meteorological Department forecasts: consistent only in being off the mark.
This has left discerning viewers fuming and judges flummoxed. "People are not always anti-judges, but if there are six-seven singers who are at par, audiences choose the easy way out by going for either a person from their region or for someone who cried more or to whom the judges were rude. Ultimately everyone wants to play God," says singer Sonu Nigam, a judge on Indian Idol on Sony, which is currently in its second season.
Take a recent episode of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2005, where Nihira Joshi, considered a brilliant singer, was voted out mercilessly. It was enough to drive judge Ismail Durbar into saying that audiences didn't know how to vote. TV titans are getting used to such disastrous surprises, ever since Ravinder Ravi, a painter from Punjab, became a staple on Indian Idol 1. On Indian Idol 2, say insiders, at least four of the final 12 have no business to be on stage. The problem is so acute that this time, talented contestants such as Mumbai's Jyotsna Navandar-who was told on air by judge Farah Khan that she was confident, good-looking and talented and should, therefore, accept that she would not get in, which is what happened-did not make it to the final. In Challenge 2005, Debojit Saha from Assam upstaged favourite Vinit Singh, with the second highest percentage of votes, 19, in one episode because of mass voting from Assam.
So, is India voting right? Is the best man or woman winning? No doubt the power game has undergone a paradigm shift. From being handed winners, gasps and all, the new crop of reality shows has effected a transfer of power, from TV czars to couch potatoes. As Khan had joked last year, "People don't care about voting in elections, but they definitely want to register their vote for the contest." With Indian Idol 1 clocking around 5.5 crore votes and Fame Gurukul a shade under that, most talent hunts in India have seen a huge outpouring of votes.
An outpouring that is clouded by emotion. From Fame Gurukul's Qazi to Manish and Poonam Goel, the celebrity couple who unexpectedly became runners up in StarOne's dance show Nach Baliye, reality shows are charting their own trend. It's about talent, yes, but as much about where you come from, how you manipulate the audience's tear ducts and how much they think you 'need' the prize. "We are a country of the underprivileged, so viewers use their power to give an opportunity to the person they think needs it," says Tarun Katial, business head, Sony Entertainment Television.
"People vote with their hearts and tend to dislike someone who is pushy, arrogant or well-off," says Nikhil Alva, president, Miditech, the production house that handles both Indian Idol and Fame Gurukul. Examples abound: Amit Tandon in Idol 1 and Paresh Madhaparia in Challenge 2005. Idol judge Anu Malik hazards a guess: "Maybe it's a sad story that moves people." Amar K. Deb, head, Channel [V], recalls a contestant auditioning for Super Singer last year who made it a point to tell the judges that he was dedicating the song to the girlfriend he had lost in 9/11. Knowing the right buttons to press is almost as important as knowing in which key to sing.
Whatever the show, the underdog is winning. Nach Baliye had viewers peeved when two favourite couples Archana Puran Singh-Parmeet Sethi and Apurva Agnihotri-Shilpa Saklaniwere voted out midway. "I think what worked in our favour was that both Poonam and I had strong TV careers and were a hit jodi in Kasautii... Audiences in India are very sensitive; they vote for religion or on sympathy. People told me Sachin had a strong Maharashtrian backing and would get huge votes because of that," says Manish.
Winners Sachin and Supriya garnered 73 per cent of the votes cast in the final, but knowing the way audiences were voting, no one was sure. Deepak Segal, executive vice-president, content, Star India, says to maintain the tenets of democracy, votes should be capped at one vote per phone-on Nach Baliye, the limit was 10 votes from every number.
With Star (Plus and One) ready to run four more reality contests (Jodi Kamaal Ki, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge 2, Heart Attack and Nach Baliye 2) and four shows on Sony (Idol 2, Fame Gurukul 2, desi versions of Fear Factor and Big Brother), expect a veritable deluge.
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