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TV Arena
TRP as we all know – the Television Rating Points which are used to ascertain the popularity of a certain programme on a particular TV channel. The interesting part is that there was a time when all the programmes were major hits. Programmes like ‘Yoh Jo hai Zindagi’, ‘Humlog’, ‘Buniyaad’, ‘Tara’, ‘Chunauti’, ‘Parampara’, etc. never needed the support of a TRP system to run on Television. And all these programmes had a fantastic run. Some ran for 2 years, some ran for 3 years and Tara for example ran for 5 years. Then came in the system of TRP, that is you install some kind of a meter in just 250 Mumbai city households and gauge their viewing habits and calculate the popularity of various programmes.
What an irony! Just 250 people living in a metro like Mumbai decide and dictate the taste of 12,000,000 people. To add is it the programmers sitting in the TV channels starting advertising and following the TRP results religiously instead of giving by the pulse of the people. A man on the road says that he likes an ‘X’ programme, but the channel tells him ‘NO’ you don’t like ‘X’ programme but you like ‘Y’ programme. The man is confused.
Because all the channels had to achieve their topmost TRP’s for all their programmes , the channels employed young graduates of mass communication or such allied courses as their EP’s or Programmers. So far so good. But now all the creative people who had given the TV industry programmes like Tara, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Buniyaad etc. using their creative mind and technical intellect had to think, produce, direct, execute & deliver as per the demands of a fresh mass communication graduate. The creativity went to the dogs and intellect ran out of the window. Look at the irony of a man with an experience of 20-25 years in his respective field is forced to work as per the intelligence of a fresher. The result, frustration, sub standard programmes and fall of TRP and consequently fall of TV channels. It’s a known fact that the popularity enjoyed by Zee & Sony in their earlier days was much more than what they enjoy today. Both of them are struggling to find their feet again. A glaring example is DD. Since on DD there is not much questioning on your creative inputs, things have started looking up for Doordarshan.
One of my very dear friends was making a programme for a TV channel, and mind you earlier she had given a very big hit for this channel when she was thinking from her own brain using her own creative input. But now she was working as per the demand of this EP. The programme went on air but it crashed after 26 episodes & my friend was summoned by the channel and was told that he rprogramme was being shut down because it was bad. My friend lost her cool and she shouted- “You decided my script, you chose my starcast, you put up my sets and costumes, you finalised my color scheme, you attended the shooting, the editing and the music. And now you say my programme is a flop. It is not my programme from any angle. It is your programme that is a flop.”
Its high time the channels rise from the shamble and employ some experienced people in the programming team so that creative people of the industry can give their best.
To corroborate my thoughts - I’ll state that somebody went to an EP and said that he wants to make an episode on Munshi Premchand’s story. The EP said, he would like to meet Munshi Premchand first.