Being locked-in at home under curfew caused by the influence of Covid-19 will be even lesser fun soon. One’s favourite serials on Star Plus or Sony or Colors or for that matter Zee TV are re-running old episodes. Because none of them have enough ‘banked’ episodes of the serials already on-air.
Channels and their producers often keep a stock of ready episodes in the ‘bank’ or in active storage. That means that if episode No. 25 is on-air today, the creative team would have to have episode number 35 already canned fully. And episodes 36-40 should be on the floor. And Episodes 41-48 would be in the scripting stage. All these are hypothetical numbers but indicative of how work-in-progress is handled at television channels.
The months of closure due to the directives issued by the Centre and the Maharashtra Government amid the outbreak of Covid-19, TV shows have now resumed shooting at the Film City, Mumbai with fresh guidelines. The channels and their staff have been asked to maintain sanitisation and have made wearing of masks mandatory. The present norms are limited to indoor shoots only as outdoor shoots continue to be banned.
The current phase of curfew and the earlier lockdown were obviously not planned for or expected. So, every serial would have about two weeks at most of ‘banked’ content lying with the channels. At five episodes per week, that is about ten, max twelve episodes. It is assumed that in about a week’s time from now, fresh episodes would most likely have a dry run.
The problem though will not get over so quickly. Even if normal work routines re-commence, it will take at least 10-12 days for the teams to re-group, commence shoots, edit and be on-air again. So, channels could either be running or then re-running old episodes of popular serials. Or take these serials off-air till normalcy returns and put popular old serials in place as stop-gap content.
Till some time ago, Zee Marathi was airing old episodes too. Like in Chala Hawa Yeu Dya the channel was telecasting old episodes when top Bollywood stars like Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Irrfan and others graced the show. Now the pattern has changed.
Now, let us go to a news channel for a bit. India TV’s weekly show Aap ki Adalat is still airing old episodes like the ones featuring Alia Bhatt, Narendra Modi and Baba Ramdev hogging the limelight.
Doordarshan
The return of classics like Ramayan and Mahabharat to Shah Rukh Khan’s Circus were not very recently on air and were driving viewership of Doordarshan making it the most watched channel in Hindi-speaking markets. Devotional shows like Ramayan and Mahabharat, brought back on DD on public request, are driving total viewership on the channel.
From 1.2 million impressions in week 12 starting on March 21, the viewership for Ramayan grew to 545.8 million impressions in week 13 starting on March 28, according to a BARC-Nielsen data.
Similarly, Mahabharat on Doordarshan witnessed a spike in viewership which went up from 0.4 million impressions in week 12 to 145.8 million impressions in week 13. Hence, we can say that religious content is keeping TV audiences glued to their sets.
Other classics like Shaktimaan, Byomkesh Bakshi, Shriman Shrimati, Buniyaad, Dekh Bhai Dekh, Circus are also entertaining TV viewers.
