The Killing Screen?

Bhattacharya was 43 years old when he died of a heart failure. People in the TV trade will tell you he was under tremendous stress. Stress: that six-letter word which the TV industry lives by, thrives upon and caves under.That’s the other side of midnight. Behind the bright lights, the loud music, the glittering promos is a tight and tense world of high drama. As viewers and critics, we are fairly damning in our condemnation of serials. “Everything is so awful! There is nothing to watch on TV”. If you have heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times. And it is true: serials are bad; in many instances, they’re terrible.

For the industry, such criticism is hurtful. Not because it is untrue, but because it is ungracious and uninformed (or so they feel). Everyone in the industry is at pains to stress (that horrid word again) that TV is in its infancy: until 1992, there was only DD, only DD, onlyDD. Zee is now a toddler of six, Sony three, and STAR Plus Hindi, 2 years old. Which means they need time to mature. Much of what is being done is experimental: most of it is genetically American or British. The industry readily admits it: but why reinvent the wheel, they argue? Especially when money and time are short and there is work to do. Give us time, they sorta say to you.

But time, as Bhattacharya found, is something people in the industry haven’t got. Advertising revenue, the only real source of income currently for the industry, is more in demand than in supply; competition between channels for the little that is available is forever growing: Sahara (Home TV) is next on sometime early next year; then there will be at least 10 free-to-air entertainment channels wanting to have the cake and eat it too. But there’s just not enough dough to bake such a cake. At the same time, the viewers’ appetite for better entertainment, more variety is only increasing. Which means that the industry must spend moreto achieve higher quality. Money? Who’s got that?

Everyone lives by a strange beast called TRPs — the people’s verdict. Serials, revenues and futures ride on these rating points. Because sponsors/advertisers, too, follow the TRPs: high TRPs= advertising, low TRPs mean OK, Ta ta. Quite literally, a question of life and death. If a TRP hiccups, dips, channels, producers rush into make changes: that normally means to intensify the dramatic elements, increase the noise levels (and reduce the quality!). For nobody, but nobody knows what will work with the audience. Who, in their right minds, would have thought a horror show like Aahat would work? Or for that matter, India’s Most Wanted?

There is no accounting for public taste and that is a constant, nagging fear in an industry which depends entirely on the public for its survival. The sponsors need programmes which bring in the maximum viewers; the channels need sponsors who will bring in maximum profits and TV producers need both. More than that they need tohit the bull’s eye, they need to come up with that unknown something that will hook the viewer. Good, bad or indifferent, they work all hours of the morning and night, chasing the windmills in their minds. Enough to give you ulcers, sleepless nights, maybe even a heart attack.