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Professionalism pays

Menka Shivdasani

What a year this has been for the television industry! The buzz at the start of the new millennium was convergence -- everyone was talking about how there were going to be great technological breakthroughs and a transformation in the media world of the l ikes that had never been seen before.

Before the year was out, however, and even as several new channels such as B4U and Sahara made their presence felt, a

very tough lesson was learned -- that, first, you've got to get your basics right. If you don't have good programming -- a strong script and even stronger professionalism -- you will only be heading for disaster.

Ask Zee. The year began with everyone singing praises of media mogul Subhash Chandra and ended with an unsavoury controversy over a copy-cat game-show that only highlighted the fact that India's biggest success story in the television world was in urgent need of restructuring. As Todd Miller, Managing Director, AXN, mentioned to me recently, ``India is only just beginning to learn that you don't succeed merely by throwing around big money!'' Nor do you succeed merely by throwing in celebrity names, thou gh these days, everyone's hankering after the film stars for their TV shows and even Shabana Azmi has condescended to appear on one.

Kaun Banega Crorepati, of course, succeeded because it was throwing around big money, but then, it tempered the big bucks with lots of sophistication and style and, of course, the overpowering presence of Amitabh Bachchan. Every detail had been worked ou t minutely, right down to cheques being made out in advance for every contestant at every slab of the prize money -- just in case the contestant in question won.

In contrast, you had Anupam Kher in the first episode of the ill-fated Sawal Dus Crore Ka waving a cheque book enthusiastically and saying, ``Main abhi cheque kaat sakunga!'' (``I can cut the cheque right now!'')

``Thanks to KBC,'' as Rohit Roy, actor and anchor of Yehi Hai Right Price (Nine Gold) pointed out when I met him on the sets of Lekh Tandon's Milan, ``suddenly the game-show has become respectable''. (``I'm so disrespectable,'' Siddhartha Basu, producer of KBC and host of Mastermind grinned when I mentioned this to him on the day Harshvardhan Nawathe won a crore. ``I've been doing game-shows all my life!'')

As competition intensified, and scores of KBC clones popped up on various channels, both Hindi and Tamil, KBC decided to stay ahead of the game by planning a brand extension -- a special version for children! One thing that Star Plus had clearly learned -- and it was a lesson that everyone in the business had to heed -- was that you simply could not afford to get complacent, however dizzying your success might be. Star Plus, if it wanted to, could find it very easy to slide into complacency. The success of KBC was only the tip of the iceberg; other serials such as Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi shot way up the charts, and suddenly Star Plus became a Hindi channel to reckon with.

Channels such as BBC, CNN and CNBC were well aware of the dangers of complacency too. All of them had realised that they couldn't shove Western programming down the Indian viewer's throat and expect it to be well received beyond a point. While CNBC launc hed its India version, which completed a year this month, BBC had made its presence felt with a special 10 p.m. band for local programming, which included shows such as Question Time India, India Tomorrow, Mastermind and Wheels. Mastermind and Wheels hav e certainly made an impact; Wheels recently won the Best Magazine Programme at the Asian Television Awards held in Singapore, and Mastermind completes its third run with the finals, a one-hour special shot at the Umaid Bhawan palace in Jodhpur, being tel ecast on Christmas Day.

BBC followed up its localisation programme with a study aimed at getting to know Indian viewers better; its Horizon 2000: An Upmarket Survey for India, was designed to delve into the professional's mind and lifestyle right down to minutest details. As Je remy Nye, BBC World's head of research, said, ``India has been changing a lot, and it is under-researched.'' Jeremy is no stranger to the Indian market, incidentally; when Star Plus became a Hindi channel, he was the foreigner who appeared on their on-ai r promos, kidnapped and trussed up like a chicken!

BBC's success so alarmed CNN that it speeded up its plans to launch localised programming, a goal that it achieved by the end of the year with mixed results. In fact, Chris Cramer, who had spent 25 years with BBC before moving on to be President of CNN I nternational, even said it in so many words -- though half-jokingly -- that they needed to combat BBC because India was perhaps the only market in the world where BBC fared better.

If 2000 saw swift transformations in the television world, 2001 promises to be even more action-packed.

Game-shows will still be going strong -- watch out for Sony's Chhapar Phaad Ke and DD's KnockOut -- but other genres such as reality programming, which is big in the West should make a difference too. AXN's new thrust is reality programming -- for instan ce, Survivors -- but BBC World's commissioning editor Narendhra Morar calls this ``artificial reality'', a situation that has been set up. BBC, on the other hand, is launching what he calls a ``real reality'' show on January 2, Hospital, a 13-episode pro gramme that trains its cameras on the goings-on within the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

As for the channels themselves, expect to see lots of changes. For starters, Zee has restructured, with a little help from consultants A.T. Kearney, and the buzz is that almost all its serials are going to be axed to make way for new ones. Will this mean better quality -- or will it just be one more desperate measure to regain lost ground in a crowded marketplace? And how will the other channels respond? Watch this space -- in the television world, there is always more action off-screen than on it!

The author can be contacted at menkashivdasani@hotmail.com