Reality Shows! Or do they?

I have never been a good fan of TV soaps and reality shows that invite voting from the audience! It was on my mind to dissect them and understand the logic. Here it is…

What they do is hypnotize you in to believing that you are in control and make you feel like a decision-maker and judge and coax you into sending a SMS or call a number to vote for a particular candidate in the selected list on the stage. Poor audience vote. Some people even send multiple votes!

Here is how it works…

You are charged with 6 rupees per SMS.
The show producers get 3 rupees, TRAI gets 1 rupee, service provider i.e. AIRTEL, Vodafone, Idea, BSNL and others get about 2 rupees(approx).

The final episode of Sony Indian Idol had approximately 6 crores votes in a span of 1 hour. So that means the earnings that day for Sony was 18 crores! The winner took home about 1 crore worth contract from Sony! Just imagine the revenue of all the 60 episodes telecasted and re-telecasted on public demand !!! Do you remember how these programs carry the scroller, ‘This is a repeat telecast and hence your vote is not counted’ after a good 3 minutes after the begging for votes end on repeat telecast and that too in the smallest of the font size possible? By then you would have already sent the vote assuming it would be counted!

What is in it for you?

So what would happen if these programs don’t sell and get enough TRPs? Simple… Throw in some masala! Make the judges criticize a seemingly perfect recital or performance and use harsh words to rip the contestant apart. You would be automatically taking sides by then! Use a wild card or some other way to bring the contestant back on show and this time it would be a perfect performance! So you have earned your SMS or call’s worth! Did you ever observe that the rejected performers are from only from metros or so called big states! Why is there no performer from Goa, Kerala, Manipur or Sikkim, J & K? Because the number of people who would be SMSing from these states is low. Either people are educated or don’t care about these shows! The conclusion is that its not worth to take a performer and invest so much time and money as he would have at the maximum 5-6% of the votes of his state’s total population!

So, as they say, think before you vote next time!