Reality show boom in South Indian Channels - Misplaced economics or gold mine ?

 

Reality shows have become the toast of all channels in the South. Is it because these shows are more popular than the regular soaps ? Are they more profitable to the Channel than soaps ? The answers are shocking -negative. Yet see what is in store. Master Chef in Tamil- Telegu (Sun channels), Rs 1 cr Jackpot Quiz on Flowers (Malayalam) are already on air. Coming up is Survivor on Zee Tamil, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? will speak Malayalam with ‘Anchinodu Inchodinchu’ to be premiered on Surya TV. Dance reality show in Colours Tamil,

Already running shows are singing reality show in Flowers  and Asianet and a Comedy skits competition in Asianet. So far the most popular reality show in Malayalam was Star Singer on Asianet. Since then many clones appeared. It was replicated successfully in Star Vijay. The next big show to rock was Bigg Boss with Kamal Haasan as host in Tamil- Mohanlal in Malayalam and Nagarjuna in Telegu.Financially , it was a dud in Malayalam.

The No 1 GEC in South is Sun as BARC rating shows. This channel’s experiment with reality shows were a flop. The only Tamil channel to make a success of reality shows is Star Vijay in Tamil. Even it’s latest Cook with Comali , a humorous cooking competetion show was a run away hit. Zee Tamil too tried hard but nothing got as popular as the ones on Star Vijay.

Now Zee Tamil is coming to this terrain with Survivor the International adventure reality show and for the first time actor Arjun making his debut in TV. Sun already put out Master Chef on weekend with actor Vijay Sethupathi. Now the Bigg Boss new season will start soon. 

Reason for entering reality shows are multiple. Content wise, South channels are facing a crunch of story ideas and plots that will keep audience rooted to TV soaps. With Covid disruption, many channels could not give any new content for months together. It was here that many saw that reality shows re-telecast during this period were getting good viewership and it included males of the family. Like it happened with the news channels , where woman audience started seeing it. After re-opening post first wave, channels found that women who shifted to many of the soaps that were hits are shunning them.

All channels including Sun saw a hasty rework of the subjects , changing of directorial teams etc. This confusion and audience taste shift saw Star Vijay sharing the top 5 slots with Sun. Till then only Sun dominated the top5. Similarly the movie channel KTV of Sun slipped to four and paved way for Zee Tamil to be third top rated channel in Tamil out of the 5. Star Vijay with Bigg Boss , Cook with Comali was eating into Sun’s audience base.

Advertising agency honcho Ramamoorthy says that channels branded top TRP serials that BARC rated and also that were top in the channel rating. Now this option was coming down. No serial in Sun or any other channel were able to give a steady TRP like before. The variations in TRP were so drastic that advertisers started finding serials no more a safe bet. Viewership loyalty was a thing of the past.

As re-telecast of reality shows were getting audience, Raamoorthy says the next best option was new reality shows with new formats. Ramamoorthy says  “ There are 15 singing - dancing  shows in the South – big and small channels. Branding rates have crashed. Uncertainty in telecast and shoots is one reason as lockdown can be enforced overnight”.

A content Head who did not want to be named said that the advt rate of serials getting abruptly down  is  higher as brands are renegotiating rates  post Covid.  As a substitute to a serial branding , channel s are offering reality shows .

 " in South channels, shows are not commissioned by channels. Like IFA is producer of Master Chef and it pays for Banjijay the royalty for IP rights , slot fee to channel Sun and also produces it and markets it. Banijay does not operate this way and so it had to okay IFA . This pushes up the bench mark level for the producer to get a profit from the show,”.Ramamoorthy points.

 When the IP right owner itself produces the show for the channel , it is almost a fair and even play. In South again, celebs have to be host of shows to get the eyeballs.  The money towards these celebs is additional cost factor. The Master Chef in North India can be run with famous chefs but in South , it cannot be. For one there is no such big name. Early such cookery competetion shows with South Chef have shown this. Star Vijay's Cook with Comali clicked without any celeb host as it threw up a talented bunch of comic actors and shift moved to comedy.

For Survivor in Zee Tamil, it  would have paid a bomb to Actor Arjun as host since he is making his debut on TV. Similarly Kamal Haasan who hosts Bigg Boss Tamil is said to have hiked 25% of his fees for weekly appearance.

To get round this Endemol India, the producers who are well versed with South TV market has signed a deal with Kamal Haasan to go in for co-production.

A  senior production executive   working in a channel on a reality show project says that often he has run in with the Mumbai guys who are not willing to make changes to show format to suit local viewers. Yet another point he said was said no channel had ever done a survey as to whether the format was appealing to viewers. All the channel did was to market the show for advertisers.  

In Kerala, Flowers has opened the SK Quiz show on a daily basis at 9 PM slot and thereby taking on the prime time serials in other channels. If this quiz show garners high TRP's, other channels will be in trouble. Flowers anchor SK is head and shareholder of the channel. Once this happens, it will get replicated in other South Languages. At present, reality shows are kept for weekends. Yet another factor is that the advent of OTT, the trump card of Sunday movies of Sun topping TRP would soon come to an end. One has to wait to know the reality of the sucess of these shows .