It has gossip, romance and drama, but India's prudish version of the worldwide hit reality show Big Brother has few takers on prime-time television long dominated by cat-fight soap operas.
NEW DELHI: It has gossip, romance and drama, but India's prudish version of the worldwide hit reality show Big Brother has few takers on prime-time television long dominated by cat-fight soap operas.
The show went on air this month with 13 Bollywood film wannabes and has-been models, including a former Mr India, with the same format -- but much less skin and scandal -- as the international versions.
The series, Big Boss, will track participants over 100 days during which they are locked in a house and cut off from the outside world, with the television audience voting out one contestant each week.
The last one standing takes home Rs 500,000.
The first episode was watched by fewer than three percent of Hindi-language viewers among the nearly 62 million Indian households with cable television -- a paltry share compared to the 11.4 percent share notched by the top soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because the Mother-in-Law Was Once a Daughter-in-Law).
According to TAM Media Research agency, the first episode of Bigg Boss ranked number 22 among prime time Hindi entertainment programmes -- mainly soaps revolving around two women scheming to woo the same man.
"These ratings are quite low, especially for a new show for which there normally is far more buzz," added Ashutosh Bhagat of media buying agency Mindshare India.
The show is seen as a bellwether for advertisers who want to reach the more than half of the 1.1 billion population who are under 25 and make up the booming market for electronic gadgets and cosmetics, said media consultant Praveen Tripathi, chief executive of Hansa Consulting.
Bigg Boss -- so named because producers thought the colloquial term of familiarity more catchy than the show's original Orwellian title -- is India's first major brush with reality television.
Until now the genre has been restricted to local versions of popular game shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire or talent searches like American Idol.
The country got its first taste of the genre in the 1990s when the original American Temptation Island -- in which one member of a couple lives with a single person of the opposite sex to test their relationship -- was aired.
The series went largely unnoticed because of a limited audience for English-language programmes.
As in other versions of Big Brother, shown so far in some 70 countries, in the show's second week romance is already brewing, but contestants are unlikely to be shown taking showers or having sex.
"We will respect the stars' privacy in the bathroom. We are not going to show any explicit footage or go live with uncensored version," said Rajesh Kamat, managing director of Endemol India, the show's producer.
In India, homosexual acts are illegal, and sexual intimacy like kissing is never shown on television, rarely even in mainstream Bollywood films.
Bigg Boss producers, however, said the edited version of their show will not disappoint voyeuristic viewers. "
Already, some guys are getting adventurous with the women. Aryan Vaid has been quite touchy-feely of late," said Kamat, referring to the former Mr India who appears to be trying to woo starlet Anupama Verma.
Among others on the show are Bollywood siren Rakhi Sawant -- known for her raunchy dance numbers in B-grade films -- who is desperately trying to change her image by handwashing her housemates' clothes.
"Rakhi is not a weak person. I am becoming a good girl," she said, sometimes referring to herself in the third person. "Now anyone can marry Rakhi."
Sawant's only brush with fame so far came when she filed police charges against Punjabi pop star Mika who kissed her on the mouth in front of television cameras.
Makers of the series have emphasised sex indirectly as well and roped in cross-dressing homosexual Bobby Darling -- who confessed he needed the prize money for sex-change surgery -- and said the sight of him shaving in the women's room will make for "great content".
But Darling did not live up to his pseudonym with viewers, who gave him the dubious honour of becoming the first to be voted out of the Big Boss house.
Also on the show is model Carol Gracias who hit headlines this year when her bustier top fell and exposed her breasts while she was strutting the catwalk at a fashion show.
"They have just got a bunch of stupid people gossiping and bitching about each other. It is total nonsense. Why would anyone want to watch a show like that," said 24-year-old software professional Shivani Rai.
Media watchers said the series could not be written off yet.
"It's not the beginning that matters. Let's see whether the characters can manage to sustain interest," said media consultant Tripathi.
Experts said that despite a vast untapped potential for reality shows among young urban Indians, the genre was still largely untested.
"Reality shows are far tougher to tackle. For a show like this, there has to be more scandal to keep the interest alive," said Tripathi.
Endemol's Kamat said the company was now considering a non-celebrity version of Big Brother, the first of which aired in the Netherlands in 1999.
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