Restructuring Saregamapa for 2006 - Page 12

Originally posted by: punjini

Hi All This is the mail I wrote to SRGMP organisers after getting suggestions from this forum.


Hello

I am one of the members of www.india-forums.com, a website which has been discussing Saregamapa Challenge 2005 for many months.
Saregamapa Challenge 2005 had a completely new format from the earlier years and was watched by far more people than ever before. It was exciting, inspiring, emotional, yet often unjust and irritating.

We would like to give ideas to the Saregamapa organisers to devise a new format whereby real talent gets rewarded and biases are reduced to a minimum. The winners of the challenge in 2006 should find the going even more tough and exacting.

Here are some of the ideas offered by members of the forum. For reading the complete discussion, please visit http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=200825.

1)A panel consisting of Shaan, Gajendra Singh and others could do the initial screening of candidates based on the cassette recordings sent by candidates. Let's say 50 are selected.

2) 5 gharanas should be set up and 10 candidates put in each gharana. Some choices for the mentors would be Jatin-Lalit, Shankar Mahadevan, A.R. Rahman, Ismail Darbar and Shiv-Hari, Aadesh Srivastav.

3) Out of the 50, we can filter the contestants and bring down the number to 10.

4) A panel of distinguished judges from the musical world should be appointed for judging. These judges should be given a good briefing about what judging is all about. A format should be made whereby a weighted ranking is given to various aspects of singing such as sur, taal, breathing, variation from original song, dance movements etc. The marks given by each judge should be shown on screen. Every aspect of singing must be given a weightage. Something like this:

Originality of voice: 5%
Ability to sing song close to original song:5%
Ability to sing in sur: 60%
Ability to sing in accordance with taal: 20%
Performance: 5%
Complexity of song: 5%

5) The formula suggested for marking is:

Judges - 60% weightage
Mentor's voting(except for candidates own mentor) - 20% weightage
Orchestra people voting - 10% weightage
Public Voting (needs rectification, like one sms per mobile no., one vote per landline no., NO VOTING THRU INTERNET.) - 10% weightage
6) Since the orchestra accompanying the singers will have a good idea of the singers who are singing off-key, their votes are important.

7) Over several weeks of singing, the candidates can be eliminated until one girl and one boy are left standing. So there should be two 1st prize winners.

8) In the current SRGMP format, too much importance was given to "performance". It is felt that moving or dancing at the same time as singing takes away some of the energy that the singers would have put into their singing. Nihira and Swananda, who are rated by many as the best female singers in the show, were not good dancers but rather made their voice do all the acrobatics.

9) Audio visuals have been a subject of some debate. Most people don't want to see something contrived like a contestant getting up from sleep, his/her dreams and things like that. These people are not good actors so everyone can make out they are faking it when they try to act. However, AVs where there is no acting such as shots of the contestants at home,their village/hometown, interviews of relatives etc, interviews of the public with regard to their favourite contestant etc are appreciated.

10) Some of the rounds suggested by members are:
round without any accompanying music where each contestant's voice will be heard without instrument-support.
round where the pitch of the song is changed by the instrumentalists and the singer has to sing in accordance with the pitch
classical round where only classical songs from films are sung (in fact a whole episode can be devoted to classical songs from films)
folk songs round
duet round
11) A lot of arbitrary things happened during SRGMP 2005, which should not have been allowed at all. For example, when one of the judges asked the mentors themselves to decide who should be the winner. That's how Aishwarya got ousted. The judge (was it Alka Yagnik) got away by passing on her responsiblity to mentors. Another time when one of the judges were unable to decide and said "hum in subko kal phir se sunenge". The judges must decide in whatever time they are allotted.

12) In the new SRGMP format, it must be clearly laid out what to do if there is a tie or if the judges are unable to decide who is the best.


13) If a contestant is not well, no retakes should be allowed. It's not fair. Everyone is going to have some problem or the other due to tension. It was not fair when Himani, who fainted in the middle of the show was given a second chance.

14) The surnames of contestants should not be revealed. I mean if we just know the contestants as Paresh or Vinit, we will never know which state they are from and partisan voting might be avoided to some extent.

15) Contestants should not be allowed to ask for votes from their respective states. In a country where regionalism sometimes borders on insanity, this is a dangerous practise.

16) However, voting analysis in the form of graphs showing zonal voting helps to know the mood of the national audience. This time they could include the pattern of voting of NRIs and Central India apart from North, South, East and West India.

I hope the ideas given will be useful in devising a new format for SRGMP Challenge 2006.

Sincerely

WELL DONE PUNJINI.............👏

GOOD JOB KEEP IT UP...........

GAJJI WILL SURE RESPOND TO UR E-MAIL......😉

👏

punjini,

excellent idea which will never be implemented. For any suggestion to be accepted it has to generate atleast equal revenue for zee as in SGMP 2005.

Let us not forget, they are doing business and money is what drives everything.As soon as you say public vote weightage is 10%, it means much less vote and much less money for Zee and so discarded.

Why do not you think of a structure which will not only improve the structure and also improve the money flow for Zee?

Then only they will listen to you.

Originally posted by: arnab_mukherji

punjini,

excellent idea which will never be implemented. For any suggestion to be accepted it has to generate atleast equal revenue for zee as in SGMP 2005.

Let us not forget, they are doing business and money is what drives everything.As soon as you say public vote weightage is 10%, it means much less vote and much less money for Zee and so discarded.

Why do not you think of a structure which will not only improve the structure and also improve the money flow for Zee?

Then only they will listen to you.

Hi Arnab

Yes, maybe the suggestions are too idealistic. Even if they implement some of the suggestions, such as omitting the surnames of singers and increasing the role of judges, I will be pleased that something has come out of this effort. Even if they make it 50% public voting and 50% judges voting, it would be wonderful.

Actually, I am not clear how public voting increases the revenues for Zee TV. Is it that a portion of the mobile phone company's earnings are given to Zee?

Cassette Recording as first point of entry will not do. Gone are the old times when what you heard on tape was pretty much un-edited. Now, what goes on a CD as a final recording has gone through sound editors and music fill ins, pitch edging and many other edits that can make the recording sound amazing. Even if the guy is selected and later on ousted from the competition, the issues is that at the first point of entry his/her tape recording precluded someone who was probably much more talented, but didnt go through the same level of sound editing (hire a good music engineer basically) as the one whose tape got selected. Based on what little I know about "recordings"< I feel this is a pretty big deal and can pose to be rather unfair. A "Live" test from the first instance itsel fmight be the most fair option even if harder logistically.

Why dont they the SRGMP Team, look and just follow similar formula from AMERICAN IDOL. I mean how difficult can it be, have auditions in different cities, and filter candidates, that way you get a bunch of people, select 100, then from these 100, break down to 50 ... and then from the 50, have a group of 12 girls, and 12 boys, representing the final candidates.

I dont agree to an extent of having two winners, however, i do understand where the idea came from or means. I just think its not realistic. Reason being, doesnt matter if you're a boy or a girl, its the talent thats the most important factor. So, if you're in the last few, then you want to make sure you are THE BEST. so i think it would be more rewarding to say that you won the competition overall with mixed candidates, as opposed to saying, oh i came first in the girls, just doesnt have the same outcome.

It should all be left to public vote, totally scrap the idea of asking mentors for ratings etc, because bias will always be an issue, regardless. The only person this series who was unbiased was IDji, he was supportive off all the candidates, and encouraged them all, regardless of which gharana they were from.

PUBLIC VOTES, MULTIPLE VOTES .... should be allowed.

REGIONAL breakdown, is DEFINATELY a NO NO .... thats absolutely ridiculous, because we're looking for the next voice of INDIA .. the whole of India not a specific region.

No need to invite guest judges ... from BOLLYWOOD movies, they dont really know how to judge someone's singing. Instead, our candidates, should be given the opportunity to sing or dub songs. Ie, have a round, where a video clip is shown of a song from a movie, and let the person sing this, and then be judged on their performance.

OH and the most important thing to remember for challenge 2006!! GAJENDRA PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you make an effort to STRUCTURE the whole show .... have some sort of structure to it, as opposed to just adding what you want when you want, and dragging it out to gain commercial dividends, isnt exactly ETHICAL now is it??!!!

OH and how about an album release songs, from the top 10 challenges of srgmp .... !!! promote the show aswell as commecial gains for the investors . 😉 something for the fans to look forward to.

Originally posted by: punjini

Hi Arnab

Yes, maybe the suggestions are too idealistic. Even if they implement some of the suggestions, such as omitting the surnames of singers and increasing the role of judges, I will be pleased that something has come out of this effort. Even if they make it 50% public voting and 50% judges voting, it would be wonderful.

Actually, I am not clear how public voting increases the revenues for Zee TV. Is it that a portion of the mobile phone company's earnings are given to Zee?

Yes Pujini. It does not cost Rs. 6/sms when u send SMS to people. Is not it? The extra amount goes to the company and that is huge money.

Originally posted by: bigmac

Cassette Recording as first point of entry will not do. Gone are the old times when what you heard on tape was pretty much un-edited. Now, what goes on a CD as a final recording has gone through sound editors and music fill ins, pitch edging and many other edits that can make the recording sound amazing. Even if the guy is selected and later on ousted from the competition, the issues is that at the first point of entry his/her tape recording precluded someone who was probably much more talented, but didnt go through the same level of sound editing (hire a good music engineer basically) as the one whose tape got selected. Based on what little I know about "recordings"< I feel this is a pretty big deal and can pose to be rather unfair. A "Live" test from the first instance itsel fmight be the most fair option even if harder logistically.

You bet the logistics of live auditions can make people go crazy. Each singer is barely given a minute to sing and that too after waiting 7 hours or so in a queue. Can any singer give his/her best in such condtions?

I have been watching srgmp since the days of sonu Nigam,
Ammaan&Ayaan,the shaan.My series in this like finals of every year,International edition,Golden voice hunt ,to name afew.Producers of the show or sms companies in the present version might have made some money,but what what about so many good singer we heard all these years.Only a couple of them could find aplace in bollywood.The winner of Golden voice Hunt, Arpita Mukherji and some other finalists from different series were seen competing in Fame Gurukul of Sony.ZEE tv or producers fo srgmp should spend some money &their contacts to help the genuine singers to find aplace in bollywood or music industry.Agood singer like Abhijit Ghoshal,who quit after winning 13 episodes in one of the series is still struggling.

Originally posted by: Shantibai

My next day time job
to sell water bottles and vada pau at the sucker saregamapa 2006 line
and re-energize the thakelaas.so we dont have to watch any more fraudulent singer who croaks in her or his falsetto voice with the blessings of that pakistani shyster Himmmmmmmy

Just think, an eminent group consisting of Lata, Ravi Shankar and others will come all the way only to watch two low quality singers competing against each other in the SRGMP finale this time.