A decade or so back, when there were no multiplexes, no digital prints and no releasing of hundreds of prints for the same movie, a very common sight to be seen during the first week of a film was delivery boys running from one theatre to the other delivering reels of the movie (because only one print was released for multiple theatres). The show timings were also planned accordingly so that while Reel 2 was playing in Theatre A, Theatre B just started playing Reel 1 and so on. This also led to hilarious situations wherein if the delivery boy got delayed even by a few minutes, the audience had to wait in the theatre midway through a movie! With the entry of digital technology, IIM whizkids and multinational money, things improved drastically in Bollywood. No longer does one have to face such hilarious eventualities while going for a movie in first week!
Unfortunately, despite being much more organised in terms of finances, administration and multinational management, the Indian television industry does not seem to have learned much in terms of risk management and backup plans. There have been stories of how delivery boys rush to reach disks and tapes to the broadcasters, akin to what used to happen in the film industry decades back. The recent impasse in the industry only highlights the lack of planning and backup.
A lot has already been written on the television industry workers strike. All the concerned parties, experts and columnists have expressed their opinions and thoughts on who is right and why. But what everyone has failed to point out is the big failure on part of the broadcasters and producers –to have a bank of episodes that they could telecast during the impasse. If they could not sustain even a week without new episodes and had to fall back on re-runs, it shows how poor their backup and episode bank was. Producers, however, have their own reasons of why a big bank of episodes cannot be maintained.
Says Sunjay Wadhhwa, head of Sphere Origin, "It is not that we do not have a bank at all. Usually, we keep a bank of a week's episodes. But we cannot have a bank that will help us sail through two weeks. This strike took us by surprise." Agrees Rajan Shahi, head of Director's Kut, "Right from the time Bidaai started, we have maintained a bank of 2-3 episodes. Beyond that, it is difficult."
And it is not that people were not aware that something like this could happen. There have been innumerable close shaves where episodes had to be changed at the last moment because of someone falling ill, or going out of station on some other exigency. But despite that, producers kept on shooting for episodes just a day in advance. This led to stress and fatigue in everyone associated with the shoot. Every now and then we read stories of how an actor fainted on the sets, how a technician fell ill while working overtime and everyone desperately wanted to go on breaks after gruelling schedules. But nothing could stop the industry to move on at a neck breaking pace without any process or backup.
In fact, they used this just-in-time philosophy to their advantage by changing storylines at the last moment based on audience feedback and TRP ratings. Ratna Sinha, (Chota Ganapati) says,"The whole storyline of daily soaps depends on audience reaction and TRPs. How can you have a bank for them? It is not practically feasible." Agrees Wadhhwa, "For daily soaps, you have to wait for audience feedback to change the storyline. There is no way to have a big bank for daily soaps. It has to be just-in-time."
However, sadly enough, they did not think of the huge risk the just-in-time method posed for the media industry. While it has worked very well for a number of engineering industries, in the media world, where a delay in publishing is tantamount to a complete production failure, just-in-time just does not work. Unfortunately, no one seemed to have realised this, or even if they did, no one seemed to have thought of it as worthy of sitting up and taking note. Now they are. As Wadhhwa says, "This strike has opened our eyes to many risks. While I do not have a solution for maintaining an episode bank right now, I will definitely start thinking on maintaining one. And we will need to think of creative solutions for that."
Rajan Shahi, producer of Bidaai, agrees to what Wadhhwa says, "This strike has really opened our eyes. For creating a bank, we need to have script writers, actors and post-production people working in tandem. We were not being able to get the entire supply chain moving properly. Now, I guess will have a bank of scripts first and then ensure that the shoot and post-production are also completed in time."
What surprises one is the fact that this is something very basic followed even in the newspaper industry. Unless the editors have a bank, they do not start a column. Obviously the television industry did not want to learn from their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
The timing of this impasse may bring in more bad news for the industry. With the global recession hitting India as well, advertisers are on the verge of tightening their purse strings and reducing ad budgets. Such an impasse and re-runs are only going to expedite their decision of cutting ad spends.
One sincerely hopes that the industry learns from this and rebounds as a better and more process oriented place to work in.
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