I am back again. Sorry, this may seem somewhat off-topic because the post is not an episodic analysis. Rather, it is about whether it is fair for a beautiful show like KRPKAB to shut down just because it has more viewers in Youtube than in TV. I just wanted to share my thoughts with all of you and I hope I am not violating any rules in the process of doing so.
As I became somewhat sane after watching the old episodes in Youtube, I remembered Durjoy Datta's tweet on 12th August. (https://twitter.com/durjoydatta/status/896381390945693697)
If only you guys had watched it only television sets and not YouTube. More than anything, it's simple mathematics.
In the past, before TV made its place in Indian household, radio was a popular medium of recreation. During that time, audio plays (or Shruti Natak) used to be as popular as TV series these days are. Slowly, TVs entered the picture and on 7 July 1984, Doordarshan telecated Hum Log - Indian TV's first daily soap and first serial drama series on Indian subcontinent [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hum_Log_(TV_series)]. As a result, with time the popularity of TV series rose and audio plays faded out slowly. Though radio still survives today, the nature of programs and use of radio has changed and evolved a lot from before.
Right now, in this phase, we are making another transition - from TV to Internet as a mode of recreation, and no transition is without hiccups.
During Industrial Revolution, when machines began replacing manual labor in factories, would it have been fair to stop the transition, citing unemployment of laborers as a reason? No, because stopping progress of mankind and walking backwards is not justified. The solution was in embracing the machines and educating the laborers into more specialized work.
Similarly, in the communication era, it is not justified that people use TV instead of Internet to watch their favorite shows because people would by default choose what is convenient for them. And it is not fair to stop a natural transition.
But then TRPs fuel the income of producers and channel; without the income how would they run their shows?
I feel the solution is not in non-experimentation in content or shutting down shows with low TRP ratings. The real solution is in embracing Internet viewers into the system, embrace the change in nature of viewership, as history already witnesses that the change in inevitable; and finding a way to generate comparable commercial income via Internet viewership (I am not sure if Youtube generates their target income) as well as evolving a way to rate shows keeping in mind both TV and Internet viewers (i.e. evolve how TRP or BARC ratings is calculated keeping Internet viewers in mind). I feel in some places this has already begun, but very slowly.
I really miss KRPKAB. Thanks for reading.
- Tia
Edited by dreamy.tiara - 8 years ago
CID
