TECH SPECIAL..... NO TV ON TV

NO TV ON TV 
 

The show doesn’t just go on. It streams on. Online. Where does that leave the TV?

    In 1841, crowds of American readers waited at the New York docks for the ships sailing in from England carrying the final installment of Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. The chapter would reveal the fate of its beloved heroine, Little Nell. “Is Little Nell dead?” they shouted.
    Today, it’s the finale of a television series that provokes the same pitch of anticipation — only now the audience is global. Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan’s blockbuster story of a chemistry teacherturned- methamphetamine maker drove millions of viewers into a fever of speculation about the fate of the protagonist, Walter White. The finale unleashed over 3,00,000 tweets, making it the most-tweeted finale in TV history.
    While audiences in the US fretted for the finale to air, the mood of Breaking Bad fans in India was tempered with patience. “I knew the finale would be available online in a couple of days after the broadcast,” says 34-year-old Diya Krishna who belongs to a group of TV show buffs. “We like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and some other shows, so one of us usually downloads the latest episode and we share it. I saw the finale a couple of days after it was broadcast.”
    Diya has no patience for the finite doses that shows come in on broadcast TV. “I still turn on the TV sometimes —and if there is something interesting I may watch for a while. But most of the time, I watch shows on my computer,” she says. “I have a life, which means you won’t find me sitting at home on a Friday evening waiting for a TV show. That just sounds sad.” That’s quite a contrast from two decades ago when the country stopped everything on Sunday morning to stare slack-jawed at the Ramayana. “Appointment viewing,” says Nitesh Kripalani, EVP, Sony Entertainment Network, has become increasingly inconvenient with today’s fast-paced modern lifestyle.
    The changing nature of work and play has affected the way people consume television. Life used to be much more structured, says Mohit, a 40-year-old businessman and consultant. “The time between 7:30 and 9 pm was when the family gathered in front of the TV set and watched prime-time programming. Today, that’s not really possible. I can’t be always around at half-past eight on a weekday to watch a show. It’s much more convenient either to record a show on the DVR (digital video recorder) or watch it online.”
    “We’ve noticed an 18% increase in television viewing because of DVRs,” says Vikram Mehra, chief commercial officer of Tata Sky. He adds that viewers’ desire to consume their preferred content on their preferred devices at their preferred times is changing the broadcast industry.
    So while the physical television set is in danger of becoming defunct, the demand for television programming is greater than ever before. So much so that it’s giving Hollywood a run, if not for its money, then for cultural cachet. Netflix’s pretentious yet delectable political drama House of Cards is the stuff of dinner party conversations from Delhi to DC while a few knowing remarks about The Wire can earn you some serious cred. No longer do intellectuals look down on the TV-watching masses, and it’s now quite cool to confess to going on ‘show benders’. “One of the reasons why TV got so good in the last 10 years is because people got sick of their projects not being made in Hollywood,” says Andy Greenwald, an American TV critic. “So we saw this flood of actors and writers and ideas just gushing into TV.” This led to what is being described as the “golden age” of television in the US where streaming websites like Netflix are driving the obsession with shows rather than the networks.
    The internet has changed the game. In 2002, India had 16.5 million users with internet access and a penetration level of 1.6%. A decade later, TRAI puts the number at 164.81 million, of whom 15.05 million have broadband access. The country’s broadband access rates remain low, but still it has caused a remarkable increase in the consumption of video content, which has doubled in the last two years, to 3.7 billion videos watched per month. According to a comScore report, the total online video audience in India has grown 74% to 54 million viewers. The average viewer is now watching 18% more videos and spending 28% more time viewing. Even streamed shows like House of Cards or Netflix’s new show, Orange is the New Black, can be downloaded or watched online.
    With so much exciting stuff available a few clicks away, viewers in educated, computer-savvy India aren’t ready to settle for the fare dished out by channels. “Take Game of Thrones,” says Mohit. “It has a lot of violence and nudity, and cuts made it unwatchable. I would rather watch it as it was originally broadcast on my computer or tablet than watch the butchered version that appeared on TV.”
    Which is why broadcasters and channels have begun to target devices. Tata Sky’s Mehra says, “We have users asking, why can’t I watch this show on my phone?” Tata Sky responded with an app allowing users to link their phones to their set top boxes and use their accounts to stream content. Sony’s SonyLIV Video On Demand website also caters to devices and tablets through apps, and has seen consumption rise dramatically.
    For Priya, Sukanya and Nandini, schoolgirls from Chennai, the TV is a piece of furniture. “The time I get to watch programmes is limited — the TV is not always available, the computer is,” says Sukanya. “The last time I waited for a show to come on TV was so long ago, I hardly remember. I think it was Winx Club, when I was a kid.” The girls are fans of an anime show called Shingeki No Kyojin. “Watching it online allows me to pause and replay sections of the show — I can see how a particular character reacts to an incident,” says Sukanya. For this generation, watching a show is a social activity involving ‘ships’ (discussions on relationships), OTPs (One True Pairings — a term for official leading couples), ‘fics’ (fan-fiction), tropes, memes and fanart. “You watch an episode, and then you go on social media and discuss it — the plots, the characters, you look at fan-art and read fan fiction. You can do all this after watching a show on TV, but it’s not the same thing,” says Priya.
    TV networks are aware of this shift. They know there is an affluent market willing to pay for timely programming of quality shows. Star India’s new channel, Star World Premiere HD is an attempt to tap this audience. “We want to get viewers who have moved to the internet back to TV,” says Kevin Vaz, the general manager for Star India’s English channels. “They were downloading shows because the latest seasons were not available in India.”
    The new channel may stop some folks from cutting the cable cord. But for those who already have their Roku boxes and Apple TVs the next question may well be how to arrange the living room sofas without a TV to point them at.

Narayanan Krishnaswami | TOI131103