Article -What's really called good content.

Director of many hit TV shows 'Iqbaal Rizzvi' recently stirred up a controversy when he blamed 'Indian audiences about cribbing for good content but do not accept it commercially whenit is delivered to them'. Our team decided to do a mini survey to find why exactly it happens and why is it such that the shows that have 0 content run for so long and others just collapse on the floor. Reasons can be either illogical or totally frustrating but we wanted answers. Our team looked upon intofew cities like Agra, Delhi, Mumbai where our team members that stay there spoke to some of the people and tried to find outthe reasoning.

Akriti Pathak from Agra, Uttar Pradesh had her answer to the whole scenario. This is what she said on the whole matter. 'I think these people who crib and brag about good Indian TV content are the biggest hypocrites, their own families watch homely shows like 'Saath Nibhana Saathiya' 'Sasural Simar ka' 'Swaragini' 'Yeh Rishta... Yeh Hai Mohabbatein etc. Indian Cable television has been ruled by Indian women mostly elder family oriented women who prefer towatch shows that display Indian values. They can not connect with Youth Content or other type of shows which is why thesetype of shows work and It's absolutely fine. I have been a viewer of 'Kyunki ki Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi' and no matter how much people hate on this show you can't deny its success. The show dealt with family and moral values which connect with Indian people. This is what sells and always will.Next was Radhika Tandon from Mumbai who had similar views.

The thing is that people who watch shows in bulk are not on social media especially the elder women so its easy for allyoung audiences to brag and crib about the good content. Otherwise please tell me why don't good shows work commercially. Channel V was recently shut down. The only show that worked for them was Sadda Haq such a poor graph of the channel had.

And no one really watches bindass, MTV or other channels if we take the commercial point of view. People want to watch something they can relate to.You can cry over the fact that Indian bahus keep crying with glycerin and all, but this is what connects with people and henceratings sweep in. Facts are Facts.Kamini Chaudhary from Delhi duplicated the same thing and dissed out the fact on hating people who watch family oriented shows.

She said - 'Instead of hating on people who watch such shows why can't people get together and support good content if that had happened..the Industry would have seen a different phase. She added - Indian TV space is totally drivenby women. Men watch only cricket. They are not remotely connected to TV shows like women.

Also believe it or not despite living in 21st century Indian Women still find it hard to watch content that is related to openness, sex, drugs, relationships and all. Ekta Kapoor has been criticized over theyears for her lacklustre family shows. In order to change the tide, she launched an app called ALT Balaji for youth where you can watch such content but how many people really watch itin terms of numbers. She laughs - 'the idea has bombed totally'.

Akriti from Agra then continued by saying that's it is fair that if an Indian woman feels connected with a woman wearing heavy jewellery and being totally dipped in sanskars and all because you have to admit that TV serials are only a reflection of our society. They just mirror it. An average can't related to a protagonist that is playing Cricket in Tamanaah or A Random girl climbing mountains in Everest. Both supposedly good shows were launched by Star Plus, the No.1 TV networkof India and both bombed. How can you blame others when you yourself failed to catch up on these shows.

The definition of 'Good content' in this purpose is purely subjective.Meanwhile Kamini said - 'You can not expect a change on Indian TV just by cribbing on social media. You can not blame the channels or producers because they are only giving you what you expect out of them. They have to make money. Whatmight be 'good content' for you can be termed boring for others. Gone are the days when TV shows would run about years and years. These days their plugs are pulled off in 3-4 months itself if they fail to perform. Numbers, Ratings and TRP's this is all matters at the end. Any content that is good on TRP's is good content and shall survive.Then Radhika changed the discussion on a more innovative mode :

She said why do we target only Indian TV serials. Have you seen the News channels? Just open any channel here and you will notice how much exaggerate with each news they broadcast. Why? because it's all numbers game. They feel threatened that other channels shall get more numbers andthe competition became more fierce. There is a lot of backlash of that content on Social Media also but has it really affected anything No? Infact every 2-3 months you will find a new news channel opening up its doors because people are watching.

She also said that 'male viewership' for Television should be encouraged. 'Men should also watch TV apart from cricket and movies. It is not that Television makers have not taken risks to bring their attraction. Infact Star One, originally targeted totally men but the only show that could survive was 'Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai' and that was also a family oriented show. After that they changed gears and started making morefamily oriented shows. Even now LIFE OK which is actually the updated version of Star One is dealing with shows featuring men however, it is not being much successful. So if you expect a change you have to be in it

.Akriti concluded her saying : 'Let people say what they want to...if 'saying' had really mattered, India had been the world's best nation by now. As far as Good Content is concerned. Any content that works commercially and successfully shall be termed 'good'. I personally have no problems with any TV shows that goes on air. All the people that work on such shows work very hard and we accept them. Cribbing won't help much.

After the discussion from the ladies we also reached onto the conclusion that Indeed if change in Indian Television Content needs to happen, then audiences have to work together. They would have to accept all ideas and different concepts by makers and their success would ensure others to take risks otherwise we don't really have options available. We have to either accept or ignore what is being served.

Must read article, this is what audience think, few online people criticizing a show is not going to change anything when producers makes shows for trp viewing people.

I have seen people who call other names for watching shows like kkb but they are the same people who don't watch any progressive shows but only crib there are no good shows.

Tfs the article. Makers give what people like watching or find interesting.

Thank you for sharing this article Anu. I was fed up people attacking KKB viewers and calling them with not so good words in every article related to KKB. You can or cannot like a show but you should not attack a whole audience if they like a show which you don't watch.

Agree with some points mentioned in this article. But its far from reality to state that Indian men only watch cricket, movies or news on TV, yes serials are mostly watched by women that too housewives but time slots also matter in holding viewership of men..😛

Thanks for sharing, Anu. Good feedback from viewers. No surprises there:))!!

It will take two sets of people to change this monotony for the better. A brilliant and brave producer/director team who are willing to make the quality of soaps better while also make them entertaining as well as the audience who want it to be better. Forget about the regressive values the soap portrays but mere the loopholes (holes is too small a term) in the story and plot take the quality down. It's like you write a sentence with 20 spelling mistakes! I think there is laziness from both sides, the audience that's accepting it and the makers who are dishing out the same thing. I had watched Kayamath almost 10 years ago, and KB is just an overstretched version of it. It's like the makers can go with the same content by packaging it in a bigger pack!
Well EK changed the soap arena like never seen before. So someone else (or EK herself) one day may change when this formula fails. And it is bound of fail one day.

People are stuck to star, zee and colors. NDTV imagine got shut down because of low ratings but they were brave enough to try different concept ( and sriti was lucky to be part of two of their brilliant shows). Even Sony can't get ratings even though they experiment with different things. Channels should encourage the producers, not to be stuck in this love hate relationship and rich hero and middle class heroine concept 🥱
TFS 😃