Sigmund Freud once famously said: The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul is, what does a woman want?
It is the kind of lament that is often echoed by intellectual persuasions of all kinds. That said, the lament has never deterred the brave in their search for the Holy Grail. Call it elusive, call it what you will. But the brave (foolhardy, perhaps) often find wisps and bet their lives and fortunes trying to hunt the truth down.
This story is about a band of such brave Grail hunters — Star Plus, Colors, Zee and Sony — general entertainment channels (GEC), each of whom believe they’ve figured what goes in the minds of women who watch their shows.
Let’s begin with Star Plus which believes in Suhana, the protagonist of a prime time soap called Sasural Genda Phool. Unlike any other character in the past, Suhana is the kind of bahu (daughter-in-law) who doesn’t give a damn for joint families, fancy saris, chunky jewelry and the melodrama that accompanies Indian homes. Viewers have variously described the show as funny and sweet. But twenty two weeks since it was first given air time, Suhana hasn’t quite set the stage on fire. On Star Plus, it is the fifth most watched prime time show; and is some way off before it makes the list of Top 10 shows on all general entertainment channels even once.
But executives at Star aren’t flinching. On the contrary, they’re at work creating a programming strategy around women like Suhana. Why? Because their research on women in their late twenties, across the large Hindi heartland, indicates she is the kind of person they’d like to emulate.
If you think that risky, consider this. Colors, Zee and Sony, arch rivals all, have taken a call on who their core viewer is, what does she think like, and how she ought to be pandered to.
This is the newest twist in the battle for eyeballs on prime time television where a vicious war for higher ratings broke out around two years ago.
On the face of it, there is no need for panic. Hindi GECs still control almost a quarter of the total television viewing base. Thanks to increased cable penetration, close to 40 million viewers are being added to the total viewership base every year. And in the last ten quarters, viewers in Hindi speaking markets have spent 26 percent more time watching Hindi GECs.
Ironically though, ratings for all shows on every GEC have actually dropped. Blame it on increased competition. Since the launch and runaway success of Colors, a Viacom 18 company, (which is part of the Network 18 group that also publishes Forbes India), it has fought Star Plus and Zee in brutal battles to retain the top spot. Over the last one year, the yellow jersey has flip- flopped between Colors and Star Plus and sometimes Zee. Backed by its new high-blitz ad campaign, Star Plus has clawed its way back to Number 1 for the last several weeks.
Until the emergence of Colors, all GECs offered a predictable mix of saas-bahu soaps. “The clutter has encouraged channels to re-position and differentiate,” says Sanjay Gupta, COO, Star India. With at least two new GECs (Colors and Imagine) launched since 2008 and more than 40 million cable TV viewers getting added every year, Television Audience Measurement’s (TAM) CEO L.V. Krishnan says this could just be the beginning because with digitisation this trend will get accentuated and “channels will have to brand themselves like an FMCG product”.
The New Star
In its newest avatar, Star Plus has chosen to target the woman in her mid 20s — slightly younger than its target audience so far — and much of its programming mix will now single-mindedly focus on her preferences. In effect, Star Plus is focusing on the largest demographic segment watching GECs: Women in the age group of 15-34. Their logic is simple. While older women spend more time watching television, in terms of sheer size of the audience, these younger, newly married women make up a larger chunk.
When the marketing team travelled to viewer homes across cities, small towns and rural areas, they came up with fresh insights on how aspirations have changed. Gupta says he met the wife of a wealthy diamond merchant in Surat. She lives in a joint family and is trying her hand at design for her husband’s business. “I want people to know me as Mrs. Reena Mehta, not Mrs. Mehta,” she told him. Gupta calls this “mega change”. In earlier shows, characters like Tulsi were content with home and hearth.
“We figured consumers had moved, but we hadn’t,” he says. That is how the character of a jeans and spaghetti-top wearing Suhana was created. Gupta claims the show is a leader in its slot lending credence to their research and has increased the team’s conviction that they are indeed on the right track with their positioning — Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi.
The Colors Inspiration
Before they launched their channel, research by executives at Colors indicated viewers were fatigued by conniving women and anything goes plots. “They were watching, but cribbing about it,” says Ashvini Yardi, programming head at Colors.
Colors picked up more than 63 percent of its audiences from small-town India with its distinct mix of programmes during the 7 to 9 p.m. time band. Many of these are first-time viewers, from tier II and III cities and semi-urban towns populated by less than a million people. They couldn’t see themselves on prime time shows that were being aired then. Colors connected by going easy on the make-up, created characters not as wealthy as their counterparts on competing channels and deal with issues common in small town India.
“I think people accepted characters like mine because we are dealing with real issues in rural settings that make it more believable,” says Meghna Malik, who plays the popular character of Ammaji in Color’s Na Aana Is Des Laado, a soap on female infanticide. While her character is villainous, Malik says, the audience accept her because “They want more than just the lift of the eyebrow. They want us to be cunning not just in words but in action.” And in the context of issues such as child marriage or infanticide, the character’s hard hitting antics fit in.
(This story appears in the 30 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
This is a really insightful summing up of the new transition in representation of women on tv.
on Jul 24, 2010