Business Plan For A TV Reality Show

Chacko was scouting for ideas to produce a TV show. He found one attractive idea to plan and execute.

Here is his business plan:

Reality Show:
TV Audiences are tired of over dramatic, over dressed, over emotive actors, appearing  in almost all TV serials, confusing audiences as to who is acting as what in which TV serial. So, reality show, it is.

Concept = Singing competition for Juniors:
Preferably in Tamil but must include participants from Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala and from Canada, America, to enlarge the audience canvas! Singapore and Dubai? Nah, they are too tiny markets.

Period of Show:
One Year, yes one year. By that time TV serials would have made a vengeful comeback, in time to get next idea for a TV show, you see.

TV Channel:
Tamil TV channel preferably 'Srat Vijya TV', known for innovating ways to stretch programmes beyond limits and while it is breaking, known for placing a strong band-aid by calling it Season1, Season2 or Season∞(by that time audiences would have broken a number of TV sets in their homes)

Prize Money:
Real estate firms, desperately trying to sell their out of town, out of the way developments with exorbitant price tags.

Judges:
Set 1: One Telugu, One Malayalam and one Tamil play back singer, whose market is currently down
Set 2: Carnatic Music singers who sang few songs in movies, who behave like 'super celebrities'
Set 3: Folk, country music singers, preferably husband wife pair (ensure that the wife is good looking)

Set 4: Unemployed or under employed playback singers, who are past their due date, prime, I mean

Set 5: Top ten participants of the previous senior competition, call them also 'celebrities'

Episodes Planning:
First Month:
Get applications, do auditions in few main cities, capture captive audiences for the episodes.
'Hatching stage', sponsor - NECC!

Next three months:
Elimination rounds as episodes.
'Kneading stage', sponsors - Atta (flour) makers, Aashirwad or Pilsbury etc.

Next six months:
Take top 30 contestants and make them sing, dance, act and emote in folk, classical, western, other languages to stretch number of episodes.
First three months 'feeding stage', sponsors - Double Eclairs, CandyMan  
Next three months 'elasticity breaking stage', sponsors - Johnson&Johnson and a cheap China brand

Next two months:
Now is already broken stage, due to over exposure audience are not keen to see the top 3 contestants. Change the strategy. Bring back the eliminated ten singers by doing another wild card round selections and introduce all genres as mentioned above.
'Pain-in-the neck stage', sponsors - Tiger Balm, Iodex, Amrutanjan

Final month (phew!): 
First three weeks, make the four finalists sing, emote, acts along with their parents to whip emotions across (states, countries as well!?!) ending in a finale with mobile phone voting open during the entire last week.
'Moolah making stage', sponsors - over rated and over publicised gold-loan companies

Special strategies:
- Ensure that camera captures participants parents, especially over active mothers and fathers
- Time spent on audience is equal to participants themselves
- Make parents dance however crass it may be and declare one or two parents as 'audience celebrity'
- Ensure that these audience celebrities preferably from America or Canada and make them a sponsor
- From audience, identify actors for aunty, uncle, mother, father roles for TV Serials, to act for free
- Provide stage for upcoming producers & actors in episodes for their new movies
- Collect money for providing free publicity for their new movies
- Convert good looking judges, females of course, as models to promote jewellery, fish, provisions etc., for shops in London, Singapore or South Africa

The list will go on and on....let me stop here before it gets stretched.

Have fun. Cheers...

Kollywood vs Tollywood vs Bollywood

I am completely ill at ease to use borrowed and convoluted terminologies used for linguistic film industry. That all of them, except of course some pockets in Hindi film industry, are struggling is evident from the public reactions and responses.

Thanks to Maran Brothers, I stopped believing in the box-office collections, after the truth on monstrous manipulation of numbers, be it theatre bookings or audience numbers. They actually were excelling in converting their black money into white by showing full cinema halls, where in reality there were none.

My view on the linguistic film industry performance:

Kollywood (Kodambakkam Hollywood?) or Tamil தமிழ் film industry:

Every time I switch on either SunTV or StarVijay TV, I keep seeing a guy by name Dhanush in a number of (unwatchable) movies. He is neither good looking nor does have a personality, trying to imitate senior successful actors. Understand Aishwarya (daughter of Superstar Rajnikanth) married him. So, he can become another Rajnikanth? The number of movies they are churning out with him as hero, despite series of flops, to say the least, it is impossible to watch even 5 minutes of his movies.

Thanks to this Dhanush, I see a number of similar looking, unattractive youngsters joining the bandwagon. Even TV anchors have started to have a fling at Tamil movies. Almost every one and any one can produce, act and direct a movie and painfully do pre-marketing of their pathetic movies with captive audience like us.

Tollywood (Telugu Hollywood?) or Telugu తెలుగు film industry:

Contrary to Tamil industry, Telugu film industry is crowded with sons (of famous actors, directors, producers). In Andhra Pradesh, there is a very thin veil between film industry and politics. Can we say they are interoperable? A Vijayshanthi can lecture you on a need for a separate state, a LakshmiParvathy can lecture you on cinema being the shortcut to politics. A Jayasudha can lecture you on loyalty, political or otherwise.

These 'sons' use Telugu film industry as facilitator to enter assembly or parliament. They want to make money. If they find that their movies are found on youtube or daily motion or youku, they lecture you that the artistes and state are losing money. It is not my intention to support illegal viewing these movies. But, have these guys shown correct accounting and paid their taxes on all the money that they receive??? Certainly not.

Bollywood (Bombay Hollywood?) or Hindi हिंदी film industry:

Unlike, the Telugu film industry, in Hindi film inudstry, the process is in reverse direction. Politicians and their sons enter the movie industry in a big way. For example, a Paswan, a Deshmukh. There are many. For them there is no difference between politics and cinema. Both the place they earn handsfull and keep acting to their heart's content.

With the increased use of the Internet and social media networks, both current and earlier generations are realising that they can choose what they want.

தினகரன் e-Paper for iPhone, iPad app

Thanks once again to Sathish Kumar Pasupunuri for providing another newspaper e-paper. This time in தமிழ் language. Now தினகரன் e-paper is available as an app on AppStore. This advertisements supported app is also available for iPad. Interesting part is - you can choose city-wise editions e.g., Chennai, Bangalore etc.,

Please go ahead grab this app as it is a free app at this point in time (though supported by ads).

Happy reading!

Please share any such Indian e-papers for the readers of this blog.

Thanks.