The Failure of Zee's Sawaal Dus Crore KA

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The Zee Defensive - SDCK Contd...

Instead of the 'three lifelines' of KBC, SDCK had three trumps; instead of 'lock kiya jaye,' it was 'freeze kiya jaye.'¹¹ There seemed to be no spontaneity in the show as the anchors failed to strike a comfortable relationship with the participants. Lack of a healthy working relationship between the two anchors also marred the show. Some analysts felt that the presence of two anchors created confusion. Viewers seemed to be irritated when both anchors spoke at the same time.

Gajendra Singh, Director, SDCK commented, "They had massive ego clashes and I think it showed on screen." The anchors failed to win over the audience, whereas KBC's anchor, with his immense popularity, had completely won over the viewers. There was an also lot of audience interaction in KBC, which seemed to be missing in SDCK. Before launching KBC, Star Plus had spent months preparing Amitabh Bachchan for the show. However, according to Anupam Kher, they could not rehearse for even three weeks before the shooting of the show commenced. Meanwhile, KBC gave SDCK a tough time by airing 'special' shows with Bollywood celebrities on the occasion of Diwali and New Year. Considering the show's miserable TRP ratings, and the fact that it was drawing flak from all quarters, Zee TV announced the termination of its contracts with both Anupam Kher and Manisha Koirala after 26 shows were aired. It said it was doing this because the poor working relationship between the two had affected the show badly. The channel also announced that it was discontinuing the present format of SDCK.

It said it planned to re-launch the show with new anchors after re-conceptualising and re-formatting it. Media reports indicated that Zee TV had actually worked out on an altogether new format¹² with a mega-appeal interface between anchor and the contestant. However, the rising popularity of another game show, this time on Sony, named 'Jeeto Chappar Phad Ke,' (JCPK)¹³ forced Zee to scrap SDCK permanently.

Reality Bites

In January 2001, all the Star channels were blocked for two weeks by cable operators getting their feed from Siticable, cable network. Media reports indicated that SDCK's failure had prompted Zee to use its arm Siticable, to harm KBC's TRPs by preventing it from reaching viewers. (Another view was that Star, riding high on the success of KBC, demanded higher payment for relaying its channels and stopped feeding them to operators, mainly Siticable, who refused to oblige.) Though Star's viewership did suffer as Siticable commanded 17% of the cable business, it stood its ground, forcing Zee to make peace.

Following this, Siticable officials had a meeting with Star officials and reached an agreement to restore Star channels. Having finally accepted the fact that SDCK was a bad dream to be forgotten, Zee seemed to be moving on. The channel announced plans to launch a totally new concept in Indian television with the first homegrown reality television show,¹⁴ 'Prisoner of War' (PoW). PoW was based on reality shows like Survivor, which were being aired in Hindi and English by AXN channel. POW was supposed to test the endurance and ingenuity of nine contestants, and was to be shot entirely on location at a specially constructed, huge set at the Subhash Chandra owned EsselWorld in Mumbai.

Sinha, Vice President (Marketing), Zee TV remarked, "Reality TV show has already proved its credentials in the West, becoming the most popular genre of television ever. We are today presenting the future of Indian television." Zee TV planned to launch PoW in the near future. With KBC still going strong on the TRPs front, it remained to be seen whether PoW would succeed in dethroning KBC from the number one slot.

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11] Lifelines/Trumps were given to contestants to help them answer questions with external help. Locking/Freezing were terms used to register the final answer with the computer.
12] The new format was to have five contestants, instead of the earlier twenty-one and the concept of lifelines was also changed. Contestants were to be given a chance to select a subject of their choice from six categories, namely, history, mythology, films, music, science and general knowledge as subject of their choice.
13] JCPK was launched in January 2001, with popular Bollywood actor Govinda as anchor. It was aired only on weekends to avoid direct competition with KBC. The anchor's immense popularity and the interesting modifications in the original KBC format were largely responsible for JCPK's success.
14] Shows that put participants in real life situations and broadcast televise the proceedings, which are then broadcasted without much change. Reality TV shows like Survivor, were immensely popular in US and other countries.