English Entertainment
Spilling the beans on ‘Koffee with Karan’
Bipasha, what is the raaz of your jism?
Konkona if there‘s a great script, great director and if it requires showing skin?
Konkona – The only thing I can do is kissing.
Your husbands Shahrukh and Hrithik are dealing with the most beautiful women, working with them day in and day out. Are there any insecure moments?
Gauri Khan shoots back, “I pray to God if Shahrukh has to be with somebody else then please help me find someone for me too.”
These are just a few snippets of some of the zaniest chitchat on the premiere chat show on Star World ‘Koffee with Karan‘. Some questions leave the celebs squirming on their seats while the answers have the viewers queuing up for more. And not many of these questions have ever been asked on the small screen before. Bollywood‘s master of 70 mm, talented producer, director and scriptwriter – K Jo as many would like to call him – has written a new script on the boob tube. With his bold and sassy show he has changed the way chat shows are being conducted on the tube. Launched a few months ago, the show has millions of viewers riveted to the small screen as Karan
the host regales the audience with great elan and panache. To sum up the show: it‘s one hour of chatter and banter on a glossy set with gossipy and the most entertaining questions asked with a rather cheeky smile. There‘s a tongue-in-cheek element to the show as the host goes beep beep with his lie-o-meter. And of course, a certain mysterious chemistry between the celeb-combos adds on to the imagination of viewers. There have been other celebrity shows on the same platform (read Rendezvous with Simi and The Cover Story) but none has created the kind of euphoria that this one has. Even in terms of numbers the show has been brewing magic for Star World. Analysts feel that the show cuts across regular SEC A & B viewers for the English entertainment channel and has been able to rope in viewers
from a cross section of society. No wonder, it has also emerged as the highest-rated show on an English entertainment channel. To quote from TAM data in five metros, the Abhishek & Preity episode (11.3.2005) also managed to create history as the highest-rated show by delivering 1.82 TVR. This implies the show has cumulatively reached out to a whopping 7.6 million audience till date. As compared to the other channels, Zee English and AXN, the show is the most watched one in its slot commanding a staggering 78 per cent of the eyeballs.
Understanding the Karan magic. So what has really catapulted the show to such great heights? The answer perhaps lies in asking another question; why does a page 3 of a newspaper or a gossip column of a magazine work? It‘s all about the viewers getting a certain voyeuristic delight in the information shared. Viewers have time and again proved that they love to see that the larger than life stars have an Achilles‘ heel. The masala gossip also provides a right mix of conversation over a steaming cup of tea or coffee. Be it in college, canteens or cigarette breaks in the corridors of office.
But apart from the fact that gossip, especially Bollywood gossip, sells, it‘s probably the finer details of the show and the way the savvy host gets down to the business of chatting that has set the show apart from the likes of the Simi Garewal show or a Vir Sanghvi show. And as the buzz goes for chatting with friends, the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai director was paid a whopping sum of somewhere around Rs 4 crore for a 52-episode series, though the channel refuses to confirm this.
The USP of the show is clearly the director-turned-savvy anchor who has given the small screen his best shot. People close to him say that he has ventured where many from the film industry fear to tread. Not just that, he understands the impact of TV and for him it‘s all about being himself. To quote him, “I‘ve always wanted to host a talk show on TV. And I always wanted to interview two people instead of one.”
And the choice of two celeb-combos like Bipasha Basu and Lara Dutta, Shah Rukh and Kajol, Amitabh and Abhishek, Shabana and Shobha De; has been enough to set the small screen on fire and add the mirch-masala to the idiot box. The conversation brews hot stuff as most of the time Karan shares a rather ‘kuch kuch‘ intimate relationship with guests. Apart from uncovering the ‘other side‘ of his guests, there is the rapid fire round which reveals a lot about the celeb. The extempore chat is also all about uncovering the real face of the celebs behind their public persona. Coming out rather vulnerable, the stars bare their hurt, pain, friendship, love and life. So, there‘s parting, reunion and many more revelations on the show. Like a confession coming from a low-key director like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, “I have no friends in the industry. Aishwarya is one of the very few people I can talk to for hours.”
Looking forward, the channel plans to have a Kooler Koffee with Karan for the next season; where there will be people from all walks of life. Delving a bit deeper and understanding the format here we present a case study of the show, in terms of how the idea germinated; the format, pitch and USP of the show and selection of the celebrities. |
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
