Monday, March 8, 2021

Flop show Malayalam Bigg Boss Season 3 hosted by Mohanlal on downward slide


 Bigg Boss Season 3 Malayalam hosted by Mohanlal launched on Feb 14th in Asianet continues to be clocking a single digit TRP of 6.43 ( last week 7.14) and the extra Bigg Boss Plus of 30 mins from 10.30- 11PM on weekdays having only 6.38 pts as per BARC . Yet  another BBCafe that discusses the previous day episode by two anchors has a measly 1.06 pts.

Though Bigg Boss reality show takes time to catch the audience attention, the inaugural always remains a TRP buster in all languages. In Season 3 Malayalam, it was not. It clocked 11.12 pts . The lowest TRP rating for a serial in Asianet stands at 13.97 pts ( koodevide). The best part is that Bigg Boss Plus on same night fell to 6.38 pts. It comes as a surprise.

With Mohanlal hosting the inaugural, the TRP should have been high as his fan base coupled with Asianet's popularity and general public curiosity to know about the contestants should have worked. None of these seemed to have worked.

One factor that the channel sources say is that they did not anticipate that election dates would be advanced and campaign would start by March. This has led to a change to news channels by non serial viewers. Secondly, the social media is now rooted to politics and has no time for Bigg Boss contestants and Mohanlal, in that order.

The run up to the Bigg Boss 3 was weak on social media. When Drishyam 2 had a golden run on Amazon Prime on Feb 19 , the channel expected the Saturday- Sunday episodes in which Mohanlal appears to be a TRP high. It did not happen.

The weakness of the show can be measured by the reaction to the public on the twitter handle of Asianet to the daily promos of Bigg Boss. As one twitterati pointed out that only after 30 mins of the promo posted, a few tweets came in.

Channel sources say that even in Tamil, Bigg Boss on weekdays it did not beat the TRP of soaps and the Sunday movie. It however held sway over the time slot that Kamal Haasan came in the weekend. Here in Malayalam, the TRP does increase but  to not even higher than the 5 th TRP ranked serial( Ammariyathe) in Asianet. Sources point out that even in Hindi, Salman Khan Bigg Boss is not No 1. 

In the case of Asianet, the situation is different. The weekly avg TRP of Asianet is 990  and the nearest second is Flowers with 270. The absolute sway over the TV viewing audience of Kerala is not working towards the show is seen as bad choice of contestants and a  host who does nothing to whip up excitement.

In one of the episodes, two of the participants - Kidlan Firoz and Bhagyalakshmi, both media professionals, told each other that the entry of wild card entry at so early stage means that the TRP is down. They said it with the mike closed so as to avoid embarrassment to the channel. This is said to have been leaked and to cover it up, it was telecast as a warning to contestants to not talk muting the mike.

With election heating up in Kerala, televised debates between candidates on weekends could spell more trouble. Kerala theatre owners say that 9 PM shows are a must as it collects the most. For Asianet , TRP of Bigg Boss shows that it is bad time to air reality shows. 

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