Bahnni, sponsors don't actually have a say in the creative decisions of the show.
Their say is limited to how much they'll pay for ads during the episodes.
If they feel the episodes won't have enough millions of people watching without changing the channel for most or all of the episode, then the worth of the adslots is proportionately less.
From the latter months of 2013, channels commercial adslots duration was capped per hour. They can't increase that total duration. So they need sponsors to pay more for the same or less duration.
If the channel is willing to take a loss for its insistence going against majority-audience's sensibilities and making the commercial ads less worthwhile as an investment for sponsors, then the channel can show any track it prefers in whatever way it wants for as long as it wants.
But if they expect sponsors to pay enough, then what is being aired has to be anticipatable as worthwhile to the sponsors.
The other series you mentioned isn't even remotely in uncharted territory.:)
They have gauged every damn inch and are in the lovely position of their reduced TRP being the stuff most PHs and channels dreams are made of.😒
Every mistake MEIEJ has made in the past year, that series has done right and reaped the staggeringly huge TRP-benefit (with its attached multiple outdoors and out-of-town location shoots).
Even if the in-laws are in the wrong, the female lead's focus should be on preserving their prestige and not going against them. Doing the right thing for anyone else should be tried only if it can be done within even grossly unfair conditions the in-laws might state.
The wife must never tolerate even a word against her husband even in matters where the criticism is definitely accurate.
In MEIEJ, we have seen Madhu - and that too uncharacteristically - in track after track deprioritizing her husband and mother-in-law for others.
And when Mehul and Roma repeatedly 'jokingly' disrespected her husband either behind his back or in his presence, she was shown utterly uncomprehending that it was disrespect, far from the firm setdown she should have been shown giving them to get her approval and support from mass-audience.
When it comes to female lead's career, if the career is *not* to be a one-track thing ending in return to housewife but rather continue for the entire upcoming duration, then before the career starts (or else she would be mass-expected to end the career and focus on domestic aspect after marriage) she needs to married and appreciated by mass-audience for her total devotion and loyalty to her husband and in-laws (regardless of how deserving they are), and her husband needs to be professionally and financially more successful and praised (by *all* other characters and extras in the series that know of them both) than her than her not only at the start of her career but at all points afterward.
The most part of last year of MEIEJ was backfiringly tailored to ensure that mass-audience would dislike the start and all phases of Madhu becoming heroine.
The sympathy-gambits were transparent in the aim to garner mass-sympathy for Madhu to not only become a greater star but also leave her husband.
But her husband's money was being used to make a film that was obviously going to downgrade his career, and the film would clearly serve her. Her husband's problems and even his paralysis, Madhu would be the one benefitting.
Even the miscarriage - accompanied by the constant references to her career-continuance - looked like the removal of a hindrance to her career.
They should have handled the track like a glass showpiece that needed to be carefully steered to viewership-success, and been wary of contravening mass-audience's sensibilities.
Instead, they kept sledgehammering their POV and expecting several million viewers to change their decade or two of preferences simply to ensure track-continuance for a track that was surer with its every development of getting them to change channels.
Pabho was an excuse we needed for the bad TRP, but neither the channel nor the sponsors were likely to be naive enough to blame her.
Far worse behaviour than hers against the female lead gets far better viewership, if not directly attached to the very transparently predictable track of the husband ruining himself at his own expense and the wife getting career-benefit for every suffering of her husband and/or herself.
It was the most bizarrely shortsighted track-writing to wreck potential for mass-approval and support.
Another of the steadfast TRP scorers on StarPlus has managed to avoid most upheaval-ideas, and has benefitted for years.
Mass-viewership needs assurance that the entire episode and entire next day's episode will give them no reason of disinterest or distaste to conservative sensibilities.
If they have that assurance, and they like the main characters and the pairing, then even with minimal and boring tracks, they'll tune in for each episode every day year after year.
Even reduced viewership is damn comfortably large.
And the better the viewership, the better the budget, and - far more important - a better chance to get the sort of track we want so long as it's mass-appealingly packaged in a way that mass-viewership would successfully carry the track through.
Fingers crossed that this time they don't flub up in the tracks.
Edited by leelaa9 - 11 years ago
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