India's won the Cup, but will IPL be able to drink from the fountain of joy? The jury is divided on the craze for IPL among TV viewers this year.
While some opine that with India bagging the World Cup, interest in the IPL will definitely go up, others feel an overdose of cricket is the best medicine to help TV serials revive their fortune in the IPL season beginning from today.
"There is lesser threat to TV serials during the IPL season this year," predicts Siddharth Tewary, producer of the serial "Phulwa", and adds, "The excitement for cricket will fizzle out during the first week of IPL. The World Cup victory has taken up the level of excitement for cricket fans and for the IPL opening to beat that would be a little difficult. People now want a break from cricket and therefore our serials will benefit from this overdose of cricket. We will not have to go an extra mile to grab eyeballs with unwanted twists and turns in the script."
In fact, so confident is Siddharth that he has decided to launch his new serial during the IPL. "Had the World Cup not happened before the IPL, I wouldn't have gone for the launch of my new show "Navya" during this time. But now, I'm quite confident that the serial will get a good response from the viewers during the first few weeks," he declares.
Showing a similar confidence is another producer, Rajan Shahi, who says, "Usually, extra care is taken while scripting serials during the IPL, but this time the scene is completely different." At the same time, he does not deny that there will definitely be some changes in serial scripts to accommodate the cricket mania. He says, "With the World Cup having just gotten over, only a 20-30 per cent alteration in scripts will be done to combat the competitions from the IPL, which used to be 100 per cent in the past."
While Shahi does not expect the cricket mania to hit a very high note in this season of IPL, some channels are not quite as willing to take the risk. India's win in the World Cup has forced channels to build high points in the scripts for the IPL, opines Saurabh Tewari, fiction head, Imagine. He says, "Although our scripts did have certain twists to rival the IPL hype, we are now adding more thrill to the episodes, especially during the first week of the T20 tournament. The competition for TRPs is head on."
Writer-turned-producer Rakesh Paswan agrees with Saurabh's IPL forcast and adds, "At least I am putting an extra effort while scripting my serials during the IPL season. Ek naya josh hai Indians mein, for cricket. The level of excitement to watch cricket has risen manifold during the World Cup and the number is just going to go up during the IPL. We can't afford to take risk our TRPs during this time." But ultimately, Paswan concedes, "the TRP trend is hard to predict this season."
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