TRPs : Gagging creativity or mirroring TV viewer`s tastes ?
16 | BOOM
Will Salahuddin and Manahil ever get together ? When will Aapaji ’ s evil ways be revealed ? These are just some of the questions , that Hira Anwar , senior producer at Hum TV calls “ hooks ”, which literally hook the audience ’ s attention to TV drama serials right till it ends . “ I feel the audience wants to see stories they can relate to . So you have to fi nd that story and create the hook ,” says Anwar . A good hook , coupled with big stars and a riveting ( some would say bizarre ) story , will help rake in TRPs for Hum TV . Or so they hope , for at the end of the day producing drama serials remains a notoriously uncertain business . So what exactly are TRPs and why are TV channels so obsessed with them ? TRPs or Television Rating Points are used to judge which programmes are viewed the most . They are calculated based on meters that are installed in certain homes that serve as representative samples . There are 713 meters installed all over Pakistan that represent TV viewership for satellite transmissions . Based on the meter ‘ reading ’, TRPs calculate when the households watch television and what they watch on it . In a world where a high number of views translate into high TRPs , which in turn translate into a bigger share of the advertising pie , it is no surprise that channels are forever looking for the ‘ right ’ kind of content . In simple terms , the greater the number of eyeballs that watch a show , the greater the number of advertisers who want to fl ash their product during the serial , the more money the channel makes from that show . However , what qualifi es as the ‘ right content ’ varies and depends on which side of the drama serial production equation you are sitting on . Raamis Tanveer Ahmed , head of content at Ironline Productions , gives the perspective of production houses which create content for channels , “ Channels like projects that show a roti dhoti aurat [ a woman who cries and has a wretched life ]. For instance , recently we sent four stories to a channel for approval . The one that got approved was the one that was being written by a big and successful writer and featured a miserable woman . In the drama that was approved , the husband was supposed to leave his wife for another woman . The channel told us to make the woman pregnant at the time the man leaves .” To back up his point , Ahmed goes on to talk about dramas that held much promise but did not work , confi rming the precariousness that showbiz is known for and giving an inkling of what according to him , works with the audience . “ There was a drama called Kankar in which the woman asks for her rights . It did not do so well despite featuring big stars such as Sanam Baloch and Fahad Mustafa and despite being written by veteran writer Umera Ahmed and produced by a respected production house . The audience could not relate to the female protagonist who becomes empowered . “ The same thing happened more recently with Dil Lagi . The drama features big stars such as Mehwish Hayat and Humayun Saeed and has been written by a famous writer , Faiza Iftikhar , but is hasn ’ t done too well . I believe it is because the female protagonist is too self-reliant and practical . In contrast when Kankar was on air , there was a drama serial called Meray Harjai which was running concurrently and was getting a higher rating . Meray Harjai was about two sisters fi ghting and putting allegations on one another . Even Abroo , which has a typical saas-bahu theme , is doing well against Dil Lagi even though the cast does not feature big stars . Another drama that received high ratings was Kalmuhi in which a woman was beaten up and her hair was shorn .” Ahmed believes that ‘ the disempowered woman ’ is popular with the audience that he is catering to and hence that is what pulls in the ratings . “ We are told that we have to create stories for 15 to 45-year-old women who are watching the drama serial while cutting onions . These women see themselves as ‘ bechari ’ [ victim ] and relate to a bechari protagonist .” Sarwat Nazir , a writer who has written popular dramas such as Mein Abdul Qadir Hoon , also feels that ratings play a big role when it comes to deciding content because according to her “… off-beat concepts are usually