Mythological serials elbow out K-soaps

Television audience rating for the year 2008 has shown steady rise of popularity of mythological serials, now being telecast by all major TV channels, at the cost of reality shows and popular K-serials, finds out Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 14, 2008, 24:40:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With elections round the corner, rising popularity of younger Ram in Ramayana on NDTV Imagine and Mahabharata with hi-tech warfare on 9X, may impact India’s electoral politics.

History has shown that mythological TV serials can influence voters. It happened after 1987, when Ramayana and Mahabharata were shown on Doordarshan. Arvind Rajagopal, in his book Politics After Television, had found a link between changing electoral dimensions after Ramayana was aired on Doordarshan.

"After the serial there was largest political campaign around the symbol of Lord Ram led by Hindu nationalists," Rajagopal said. Such was the popularity of the mythological serials that cast of both Ramayana and Mahabharata won Lok Sabha. And most of them on BJP ticket.

Can it happen again, is the big question. Rajagopal did not rule out the possibility with the BJP trying to make Ram Sethu an election issue.

Television audience rating for the year 2008 has shown steady rise of popularity of mythological serials, now being telecast by all major television channel companies, at the cost of reality shows and popular K-serials.

Ramayana has got an average rating of over three since it started in May, Television Audience Measurement (TAM), a company dealing in TRP ratings, said. In fact, the serial accounts for 26 per cent of the total viewership of the channel.

Remake of another popular serial of yesteryears Mahabharata has started with a bang. It got TRP rating of 1.91, according to aMAP, another company in the business of TRP. And, it was better than Shahrukh Khan’s Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hain and Salman Khan's Dus Ka Dum.

When asked about the possible impact of epic serials on voters, Ekta Kapoor of Balaji Telefilms termed it totally coincidental.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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