Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Star's moment of truth

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Star's moment of truth

Sach ka samna is a gripping show. It asks perfectly ordinary people 21 intimate questions. These could be around their deepest thoughts and feelings — about partners, family, spouse, society or just anything. The participant’s ability to answer these truthfully could win them some money. The show, a licensed version of the American Moment of Truth, has been aired in 23 countries. It is known for its corrosive impact. In one instance, a marriage broke up on air.

The first episode had Smita Matai, a middle-class lady from Mumbai. She lost out when the polygraph machine, which decides whether you are telling the truth, said she was lying. She had responded in the negative to a question on whether she had considered sleeping with someone other than her husband.

While voyeurism and everything else that goes with it is part of the appeal of the show, so is the apparent honesty and decency of most of the participants. As you peer into their fears and insecurities and form judgements on their ability to deal with them, one question will bother you. Can you take this truth test?

Tougher questions than that will be bothering the (brand new) management at Star India, which launched the show on July 15 this year on its flagship channel, Star Plus. The most important among them is whether this show can work in India.

Of the 134 million TV homes in India, more than 98 per cent are single-TV homes. This has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks to programming experimentation. According to one report in a trade magazine, single-TV dominance now has less to do with purchasing power and more with societal thinking. Most families do not want a second TV because they believe it will cut down on the moments the family sits together to do something — watch TV.

When DTH (direct-to-home) took off in India a couple of years ago, there was some hope that programming experiments would get more frequent a la multiplexes. (See The Multiplexing of TV, May 6, 2008). When multiplexes took off in 2000, they offered different films to different sets of people, at different prices and at different times of the day, making it easier for film-makers to experiment. So all kinds of films could find their audience.

Similarly, as different ways of distributing TV signals emerged (DTH, IPTV), there was some hope that programming experiments would begin. Freed of the dependence on mass viewership-led ad revenues, broadcasters could also sell differentiated programming to groups of consumers willing to pay for it.

There are several reasons this has not happened — regulatory, structural and so on. But the biggest by far is the single-TV factor.

Given this backdrop, Sach Ka Samna or shows like it face a rather uphill task. While the first week’s rating of over four looks promising, the show has an invisible barrier to cross if Star wants it to become bigger. Kaun Banega Crorepati, another unusual format that Star experimented with in 2000, was successful simply because of its appeal across different members of the family. I can’t see too many Indian parents watching Sach Ka Samna with their kids, without cringing with embarrassment. The funny thing is that while we have evolved somewhat as a movie-going audience we haven’t as a TV-watching one. Maybe because TV is inside the house while films are something we watch outside.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has already issued a show cause notice to Star on the show. This is in response to a question raised in Parliament on the decency and morality of the show. I have no doubt that one of those sundry groups which surface when a big film is about to hit the screen will file a case against this show or do some of the usual drama in the name of public morality.

Star Plus is a popular channel which is experimenting with one show. The single-TV reality of the Indian market has made life difficult for dozens of niche channels whose premise is different programming.

So go ahead and enjoy this romp into the human psyche till the show is on air.