TELEVISION AUDIENCE AND TELEVISION CREW

Television audience is like a nagging mother in law. NML (nagging mother in laws) can be very unpredictable and difficult to please. Anything that is done can be either done better or is just not ok. NML has privilege and right to refuse and deny anything that comes from a docile daughter in law. Probably that is why most serials still have saas bahu issues. This is on a lighter side, but what is most difficult and most difficult is the understanding and fixing on, which the audience is.  It is almost like not knowing the target and aiming for it. 

Take a Hindustani music concert, and understand the rock show... There is always a crowd, a gathering which relish that kind of music. The performers and the organizers can be focused on the content as there is no pressure to churn out something different than the expected kinds. This is applicable to the classical dance, theatre plays, pub dancing, Disk jockeying etc..

But when it comes to television audience, one needs to keep in mind the cross section of people, across age groups, across income groups, across regions, sexes etc.. How can any creativity cater to such wide audience and how can someone entertain to such varied group? If yes how does one go about it? Is it easy to know the tastes and preferences of the audience for entertainment? 

It’s because of the above questions that, some standardized formats of singing, drama, dance, keep happening as they can’t totally go wrong all the time. In other words, television brings and perpetuates not only mediocrity but predictability and stereotypes. This is inevitable as there is TAM, and there are business targets to meet. No other field, no other career is tested as frequently as every week on performance. Hence TV industry people are always under tremendous stress for what happens and for what does not happen.

Gut feel, cuing, pulse, all these help one create and plan. But in all honesty, television unlike other forms of arts is far less creative as pressure entails that art is compromised. People also get into assembly line production and hence even creativity becomes mechanical. It’s very difficult for people in television to get entertained as even watching TV is a work as we all tend to compare, feel envious or try to ape etc.

Despite all that, it’s fun under pressure as the success on Wednesday’s makes all of us wait for more Wednesdays. It’s always life before Wednesday and Life after Wednesday for people working in television and only these people can understand.

Without a doubt, television is just in a very nascent stage and there is lot to achieve and hundreds of channels are going to come in very many specializations. You tube, face book, apps on mobiles, various net options are already getting integrated into television and TV is not watched in its time of telecast but is followed in a much larger scale than what the TAM can catch and appraise. Working in television is like performing marriage every day (marriages of olden days and not current .. all out sourced formula) and these marriages have kids of all kinds. And we in television keep nurturing all kinds of children.