It’s that time of the year when American TV shows get cancelled or renewed for the new television season. But why do shows like House MD get cancelled after years of success, and others like The Big Bang Theory get renewed for three years in one go?
I howled while watching the special one-hour finale of Friends almost a decade ago (yes, I’m one of those people). I’d invested ten years of my life watching and then re-watching the lives of the six friends. To me, this was officially the end of an era.
It was also the beginning of my love affair with television. I watched reruns of Friends because this was stuff I could relate to more than the emotional dynamic between saas and bahu. Years later, I discovered Torrent — a platform for online downloads — and the multitude of American TV shows it offered. As did a lot of others like me. TV channels then realised that if they could bring in more variety to their schedules in India, and they’d have a greater audience.
Soon, episodes of shows like Gossip Girl and Grey’s Anatomy were showing in India only a week after they aired in the US. Says Anurag Bedi, business head of Zee Cafe, “If we go back five years, it was difficult to get a large audience for a conventional English show… Fortunately, audience dynamics have changed now. New concept shows come as a welcome break from the conventional comedy, drama or reality shows.”
India Not too far behind the U.S.
Game of Thrones came to India only a few months after it first aired in the US last year. The second season, currently on in the US, will soon air on HBO India. “In the last ten years, more Indians now want good quality entertainment, and social media is only increasing their awareness of what else is out there. So our response time had to go up too,” says Shruti Bajpai, country manager, HBO. “We decided to bring in more American shows soon after they aired in the US.”
Last year, Star World launched Torrentz, a slot for the latest American TV shows only weeks after they aired in the US. However, because these shows air on national television, the censor board insists that nudity, sex and violence be cut. For a show like Game of Thrones, True Blood or Dexter, this means that a 50-minute episode will be reduced to about 35-40 minutes on an average. Mumbai-based Nikhil Taneja, an avid TV viewer who blogs on tanejamainhoon.tumblr.com, says that heavily edited shows on television leave viewers like him with just one avenue: downloading pirated episodes from the Web.
Whether via downloads or on TV, viewers in India today have a lot of options in terms of American television. And for fans of these shows, this is the most exciting time of the year — when TV shows we watch get renewed or cancelled by networks in the US.
good TV Shows need a strong premise
A few shows that have recently been cancelled have been going on for eight years. For instance, House MD, about a misanthropic genius diagnostician, was a breakout hit in 2004, winning TRPs as well as awards. Tomorrow, it airs its last episode in the US. “The novelty factor dies down slowly,” says a Mumbai-based blogger from Television-talk.com who goes by the handle @rnvj on Twitter. “There’s a limit to how much can be done with the same set of characters. The premise can be altered slightly with seasons progressing, but to be consistent, one can’t deviate too much from what the show is already established as being about.”
Tastes in television are evolving and most viewers aren’t interested unless a show offers them a brand new concept. Even for tried-and-tested concepts, the audience wants more. Take Brothers and Sisters, for instance. “Today, that show wouldn’t get picked up by a network, because the show had a very weak premise — a family drama with certain dysfunctions in the relationships. Today, the premise needs to be stronger than because there are so many other options,” says @rnvj.
The treatment given to a show — like the documentary style of narration in Modern Family — helps increase its popularity. “The characters talking to the audience, directly into the camera has given the writers of this show several opportunities for more comedy and insights into the characters,” adds @rnvj.
There’s More than just the drama
But if every show comes with a shelf life, why is Grey’s Anatomy (GA), set in a hospital in Seattle, been renewed for its ninth season? And why does Mad Men, about an ad agency in the ‘60s, still have fans eagerly waiting for its fifth season despite a year-long break? Profession-based dramas (Bones, GA, Mad Men, White Collar, The Good Wife, etc.) usually work not just because they offer an insight into a different industry — forensic anthropology in Bones, art crimes in White Collar, for instance — but also because they’re “essentially about relationships”, says Nikhil.
These popular shows have a central storyline — something on-going in the lives of the main protagonists. Besides, every episode revolves around a certain case: For instance, in The Good Wife, a legal drama, while the lead character Alicia Florrick deals with her husband’s infidelity, single motherhood and her career, she’s also defending an alleged murderer in court or suing the American Hockey Federation for ignoring players’ neurological conditions. “Such ‘breathers’ keep you coming back for more,” says @rnvj.
With so much showing on TV and promising new concepts coming up every year — like Homeland, which got a tremendous response for its first season, and Touch, also renewed for season 2 — TV in the US, and subsequently in India, is only going to get better.
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