Reality Shows in India

Idiot Box, the pet name given once to our television. What we see today is most of us are seductively parading before the screen for one or the other reason. Agree it or not, you just cannot ignore the influence of television in our daily life either in the form of News hours, soap serials, movies, reality shows..

Welcome to the world of reality shows.. It is the place where the reality meets fiction. Reality shows made a big entry into the lives of the ordinary people since it helps them to get rid off the clutches of the monotonous soap serials. Reality shows are either in the form of talent hunts (like singing, dancing, acting etc..), game shows, celebrity shows, makeover shows, confessions (Sach ka Saamna), etc.. These shows are helping, to a certain extend, to bring the hidden talents. Reality shows give a good platform or an opening to the talented ones.

How much these reality shows have the “real” factor?

Reality shows seems to be a huge success on the television in India since it allows the audience to be a part of the show. The audiences are allowed to choose the winner through a voting (sms) system even though its credibility is questioned many times and still to be decided. Most of the time this voting right is used to select a wrong person rather than the talented. Reality shows are taking an ordinary person to the stardom in a matter of hours. These shows are helping the contestants to groom a lot. They are always getting a chance to see and mingle with their dream stars since most of the time these celebrities are part and parcel of the show either as a judge or as a guest. It is a golden opportunity to correct and learn from the experienced hands. Contestants are free to express their feelings in the elimination round.

Reality shows seems to bear a lot of criticisms and analysis frequently based on many factors. Reality shows are criticized basically that these shows are trading on human emotions for money. It is forcing the contestant to do certain stage performance where they are not good at. How far the selection and elimination process is credible? It is still to be found out.

The judges comments needed to be standardized. They are giving a lot of discouraging comments and the channel is not asking the judges to be kept quite. It would be welcoming if they give their comments in a very pleasant manner to avoid the emotional scenes of the participants.

Idea Star Singer Season 4:

One of the reality shows in the Asianet and it is a sequel to Idea Star Singer 2007 and 2008. My favorite musical reality show even though i don’t believe in sending sms to any of the contestants. The show is aired from 8.30 pm to 10.00 pm from Monday to Friday. The judges are K.S. Chithra (renowned playback singer), Sarath (My favorite music director) and M.G. Sreekumar (playback singer) and the show is anchored by Ranjini Haridas (a person who is an expert in speaking Manglish, confused? It is mixture of Malayalam and English). The show is helping its contestants to grow (not physically) a lot. The judges are really helping the participants to correct their mistakes but what is unbearable is their gimmicks. They are trying to rip off the participants (except K.S. Chithra, who is very polite and encouraging to the participants) by cheap comedy. This is really embarrassing to the contestants as well as the viewers. Very few participants openly expressed their embarrassment on stage. These kind of attitude should be changed.

Everything is business and the reality show industry has a huge potential market since it is traded on the emotions of the audience. The whole aspect of every reality show is about money and they survive as long as they are able to convert the human emotions into currency.