Revisiting The Impact Of Kaun Benega  Crorepati  As It Completes 25 Years

Revisiting The Impact Of Kaun Benega  Crorepati  As It Completes 25 Years

Within one week of this millennium,  the face of Indian television changed beyond recognition.  Nobody—not even the enterprising  far-sighted  Star Plus boss Sameer Nair who surreptitiously initiated moves to import  Who Wants To Be  A Millionaire into this country—could have guessed what was in store for and  on Indian television  in  and  from July 2,000 onwards.

      The other channels were left looking like honorary denizens of the idiot box( with the stress on idiot). From being a distant third Star Plus simply swept past the competition  to emerge way ahead of Zee and Sony Entertainment who didn’t know what hit them  until  it was too late.

   Who would have thought that Kaun Banega Crorepati would change  us into a nation of knowledge-thirsty gamblers? Now children  in their free time no longer play—or watch—Antakshari. They play Kaun Banega Crorepati, and everyone wants to be Amitabh Bachchan. An unprecedented GK  wave took over  the country. Kids were on the prowl with questions like what was Kunti’s real name in the Mahabharat and is there life on the battle field of Kurukshetra beyond Mahesh Manjrekar?

    Ah, there went  our favourite soaps!  Kids flicked the switch to Star Plus promptly at 9.00 p.m. Many cities  rescheduled their night shows to 10.30 p.m after registering steep drops in the 9.00 p.m collections of cinema shows.

      Then came the   counter-attack. Through what else? A game show! Sawaal Dus Crore became  a sawaal sau crore ka in no time at all. Within a  few weeks the show to countermand the Crorepati competition had flopped.  You cannot fight Dilip Kumar with  his clone  Mukesh Khanna. The sets, attitude and even the lingo from  KBC has been transposed to Sawaal Dus Crore Ka. Rumours in Mumbai insisted Manisha Koirala dumped Malyalam director Upendra who was  waiting  on the sets with his cast crew and leading man, to  co-host Sawaal Dus Crore Ka. When you’re getting 5 crores for smiling vacuously in a game show why should you strain yourself over 75 lakhs?

    Zee tried hard to get Shabana Azmi to host their Sawaal. But she had other plans in 2,000.

         Laughs Sameer Nair,  “Before  the year 2,000 Star Plus had an elitist image. After we did a hi-tech game show called KBC, the home-viewing medium was turned upside down. ”

  Star Plus also had unexpected success with the two post-Crorepati daily soaps Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki and Kyunki …Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, both produced by the phenomenally successful  mother-daughter  pair of Shobha and Ektaa Kapoor.  Both the gharelu home-viewing versions of Sooraj Barjatya’s cinema  piggybacked  to success on KBC. After  KBC,viewers  simply kept  watching the two new daily-cacies on Star Plus,forcing  Zee to invent their own version of that  Kahani thing called Babul Ki Duwayen Leti Jaa, written by television maverick Vipul Shah . Needless to say, no one’s  duwayen saved the wannabes.

         Worst hit by the Crorepati cyclone was 1999’s flavour of the year Movers & Shakers. Suddenly Shekhar Suman was no longer that funny.Quality-consciousness had crept into primetime. The year 2,000 was decisive for national television as well.  Finally overthrowing the lingering lethargy  from  their monopolistic days  Doordarshan’s  Metro channel finally woke up  to the rapidly expanding competition to introduce the 9-Gold  primetimer band which  went  berserk with soaps and sitcoms featuring the crème de la crème of television.

   That all of this  happened to Indian television in the first year of the new century can’t be  a co-incidence. The Satellite gods must be watching .They must have decided enough was enough. Kaun Banega Crorepati was  born. Or  was that Amitabh Bachchan being  born again?