Young and bored

Remember the last time you were flipping through the TV channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon, looking for something new to watch and finding four-hour marathon re-runs of the saas-bahu dailies instead Your next stop, in all probability, would have been the Internet. With a barrage of VoD services having knocked on desi doors too, who even needs the telly any more If the numbers are to be believed, this digital deluge as well as a number of other factors have contributed to the present reality of the Youth genre on Indian television: its impending death.

“Star One came up with shows like Dill Mill Gayye in 2007, kicking off the youth bracket of entertainment on the telly and becoming the first legitimate Youth channel,” recalls Palki Malhotra, who was among the makers of the Karan Singh Grover-starrer hit Youth show and is now Creative Producer at BBC India. She points out that while the concept of Youth shows really caught on after that, leading to the establishment of more Youth channels like Channel V, Bindass and Zing, the programming in the space over the past two years or so has been a major cause for the genre’s decline now. “I personally feel that as a consequence of flaws in programming, the young audience no longer trusts Indian television to give them good content. Cult shows till 2014-15 like Dil Dostii Dance, Humse Hai Life and Suvreen Guggal did well because they had good programming to back them up. Over time, the scenario went from having competing Youth channels to competing individual Youth shows. By the time MTV’s Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan came along in 2014, the entire Youth scene on the medium was premised on two competing youth shows (Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan and Dil Dostii Dance) that commanded a sizeable following instead of two Youth channels that were taking the genre forward with multiple successful projects. Back then, when a Youth show would rate at about 300-350 TVTs, it would be considered a good rating and below 250 TVTs was considered bad. Today, Youth shows on air that garner about 50-70 TVTs on an average are considered to be doing well in the same bracket. So, you see ” she points out, positing that the disparity is solely on account of content and programming.

Actor-dancer Shantanu Maheshwari, who played the lead in Dil Dostii Dance and has been a part of the Youth genre’s glory days, agrees, “The young audience wants new and relatable content. If there is a dearth of that, the decline of the genre is inevitable. Personally, I don’t know where the genre is headed from here. It is already grappling with budget issues and if things keep going this way, there will either be no Youth shows left at all or they will shift completely to digital platforms. I really hope television as a medium doesn’t let go of the Youth space, though. It’s a really good platform to have that kind of content reach the young masses.”

Vikas Gupta of Lost Boy Productions, the banner behind cult Youth shows like Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan, Warrior High and Yeh Hai Aashiqui, agrees that a shift to the digital space is happening but there is more to it than meets the eye. “Let’s be honest. Indian television is a medium that is no longer reaching for the youth. With the advent of the new media, everyone is assuming that the content a young audience wants to consume will be made there. And yes, a lot of people — including myself — are creating content for the digital space but what many are forgetting is the joy of watching shows with the right kind of messages being given out to young, impressionable viewers. When we were growing up, shows like Hip Hip Hurray would inspire us. The Internet, however, is less about creating content to inspire and more about getting the most hits. For the next three-four years I see nothing for the Youth on television except on MTV and maybe Zing. No GEC is making shows for the young audience — they may be making youth inclusive shows, but that is hardly the same thing,” he affirms and adds, “Except MTV, that continues to be a youth brand, there is no channel left for the youth. Star One, Channel V, Bindass all shut down. And how many shows will one channel make And there is no systemised youth content online either. Keep in mind the youth bracket in question here — we’re not talking about 20-something millennials but teenagers between 13 and 18. The content being created on digital platforms is for people who can spend money, and that’s not teenagers — they don’t have any money! So, you’re either making content for kids whose parents pay or for young adults who are earning enough to want to spend 50 rupees on online entertainment. Those who are 13 to 18, where are they to go This, for me, is the saddest part of what is happening right now.”

Malhotra doesn’t quite buy the digitisation argument. “Now is not the first time the young generation has discovered the Internet as an entertainment resource. All the shows I’ve spoken about that were cult shows in their time, have been recorded using TV tuner cards, uploaded on random torrent sites and viewed there instead of on TV by as many Internet-savvy young viewers as those who opt for Hotstar or Voot today. So, the audience is intact and the media are much the same, in my opinion. It is the content that has suffered,” she concludes.