The rise and fall of Daily Soaps in India
Daily Soaps have reached every house in India. They are loved by people of every age group. Ever since television came to India the demand for daily soaps has kept on increasing. This has made India one of the largest entertainment industries in the world, which produces thousands of new shows every year.
Daily soaps play a significant role in the lives of many people. Many daily followers look up to the characters of shows and try to imitate them in real life. Watching these shows can have both good and bad impacts. Show makers try their best to make the shows entertaining but, sometimes they put illogical and irrational sequences to make it up to the TRP chart. The popularity of daily shows is high among housewives and elderly people who don’t have many sources of entertainment. There was even a time when certain daily soaps were so popular that they were the common topic of discussion among the masses. In older times when there were very few television sets in households, people used to gather together at a place to watch certain shows. Those were the days when daily soaps gained popularity. As the demand of viewers increased, the number of entertainment channels and shows increased. Earlier only Doordarshan was the source of entertainment but then new channels emerged and the entertainment industry expanded and reached new horizons. Though this industry is still expanding, with time the content which they are providing to the masses is degrading in quality. Now the shows are becoming glamorous and have a lot of irrelevant content in them. With the growth of OTT platforms, the daily soaps are further losing their charm. The youth of our country has largely omitted the daily soaps and prefer web series. People are now more busy than earlier and don’t want to waste their time on unnecessary content. Public has also become more conscious about what sort of content they are viewing. Some of the earlier daily soaps played an important role in uplifting our society by showcasing topics of social stigma. They also helped women to realise that they can do whatever they want to. Nowadays the shows do talk about social evils from time to time but they have become stereotypical. Every other show is repeating the same story line in one way or the other. The repetition of the same things again and again has contributed to the fall of daily soaps. Exposure to the foreign shows, especially American and Korean dramas has changed the demand of the public. Nowadays short shows are more in demand as compared to the shows which keep on going for years and lose the story track.
Public watches daily soaps for entertainment and information but if the shows become repetitive it becomes boring. Public is now shifting towards new concepts, something which is more realistic and thrilling at the same time. Entertainment is taking a new form. To keep up with the public and their viewership up the Indian entertainment industry needs to change their content according to the public otherwise the demand will keep on falling.
Shruti Singh
BSc Mathematics
Banasthali Vidyapith
