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South Indian TV channels (Sun TV, Vijay TV), print publications (The Hindu, Dinamalar, Deccan Chronicle) and ad agencies (Orchard) believe that humour sells.
Humour — not at all a funny sounding word, like, maybe, bassoon is or spoonerism. Alka Seltzer sounds funny and so does cucumber. But humour? Rhymes with tumour and with rumour and neither of these are funny — in fact, fairly serious when placed in contexts. Yet humour is that word, which inspires the tickling of the funny bone. In essence, humour is funny.
Every woman wants a man with a good sense of humour; every student wishes there was some laughter in class; every employee hopes for a fun place to work in where there are jokes floating around all the time. Everybody wants humour to be a part of their lives. The million-dollar question would be: why is humour so important even when it doesn’t come naturally to most people.
Humour livens up our mundane and routine lives. Humour brings like-minded people together: humour is not just funny but also loads of fun. Without humour, work would be boring; without humour, movies would be no fun; ads would actually be hazardous; without humour, even parties would be a pain.
Humour helps us all go on. Humour brings back the lost charm in our every day lives and there is no escaping from humour. Who doesn’t like to smile occasionally and laugh out aloud (well, we are not talking about exceptions here)? Who doesn’t like to play those small silly pranks — even at an age that all this becomes unimaginable? Who doesn’t like to start their day with a smile on their face? The moot point is: all of us want some fun, some laughter in our lives, because that is what will keep us going.
And not surprisingly, like media infiltrates in all aspects of an individual’s life, it also brings humour along with it. Be it movies; be it plays; be it advertisements; or be it newspapers… every genre of media gives its patrons that breathing space with humour, which no one else can replace.
When was the last time you read a paper without going through the comic strip? When was the last time you didn’t enjoy a really funny movie? And when was the last time that you wished the slight slapstick comedy wouldn’t be a part of that abstract theatre that you went to watch? Humour is crucial to all our existences because without it we would all be zombies.
Humour on the idiot box
“South in particular, is very big on humour,” says Brian Peppen, Programming Head, SS Music. Not to say that the rest of India is not, but in the south of India, the Dravidian land also makes space for its unique humour, which keeps it going and that has its own flavor. Dry humour (Kadi Jokes, as Peppen calls it) is what makes all his young audiences religiously stay tuned to SS Music at the funny hours.
Peppen adds, “Humour belongs to television”. Cary, a VJ with SS Music, believes that it is humour that makes television as a medium interactive. Audiences consciously tune in to the channel to have their share of laughter after a long day. ‘Just for Jolly’, a programme that plays clips of comic scenes from various movies is the highest rated show on SS Music with a TRP of 3, while most other programmes just about manage to achieve a TRP of 0.3. Letting us in on his secret, Brian reveals that most other programmes (achieving lower TRPs) entail a lot more hard work than ‘Just for Jolly’ does since this is all about accumulating clips of funny scenes from movies and playing them during the show. Yet, it is this show that manages to get the channel the highest TRP, with minimum amount of work put it.
Murali Raaman, Jaya TV’s Programming Head, doesn’t completely agree with Brian on the fact that the funny work is all fun. Yes, perhaps providing film-based comedy shows is easier, but Raaman believes that tickling the audiences with soaps and serials is a lot tougher than making them cry. Says Raaman, “A normal soap is much easier to finish. In the comedy genre, a full day shoot will result in five minutes of programming after the edit sometimes. It’s not funny and it’s a lot of hard work. It is fun at he end of the day, though. Usually, all channels engage in film-based comedy shows. We changed the format with sitcoms in comedy.”
‘Ari Giri Assembly’, a comedy chat show on Jaya TV, ran for over 750 episodes and catapulted Bosky and Chitti Babu to fame. Currently, one of the stars, Bosky continues with ‘Siri Giri Station’ 0.07 on the channel, and Chitti Babu hosts (alongside the gorgeous and the full-of-life Archana) Sun TV’s extremely popular film-based comedy ‘Comedy Time’. Jaya also has ‘Krishna Cottage’, a daily soap comedy.
Harsh Rohatgi, DGM, Vijay TV, says, “Comedies are clutter breakers and they have a specific task! As far as Vijay is concerned we have successfully used the comedy genre on Prime time to lure the non-serial audiences. Humour & comedies have always been present and are an important part of entertainment.”
Rohatgi adds that comedy was serious business, and that the credit for sustaining it for a longer period of time solely goes to the creative team and more importantly the scriptwriter. He adds, “Our comedies are targeted at the mass audiences and are in line with today's humour depicted in movies as well.” Vijay TV is confident of the genre, given that its shows like ‘Lollu Sabha’ and ‘Kadhavul Padhi Mirugham Padhi’ have scored in excess of 5 rating points against ‘mighty’ properties.
To read the complete article, check out a copy of the Impact issue dated August 15-21, 2005.