One of the tweets about the Airtel T20 Champions league asked: ‘Who is playing? Where? And more importantly, why?’. That pretty much summed up the attitude towards the tournament. Once the local teams got knocked out in the early stages, whatever little viewer interest remained in Champions League, vanished. Iss Diwali ban gayi, gup wali.
Local team participation is a sure-fire boost to TRP ratings in sports telecasts, but those who are genuinely passionate about a sport – F1, soccer, rugby – seem to follow the sport irrespective of local team participation. Not so with cricket. The average cricket fan seems to lose interest if India gets knocked out of world tournaments, the quality of cricket be damned. Advertisers seem to speculate on such tournament and when the TRP’s don’t match expectations, they feel cheated. The poor show on TRP ratings is bound to be a dampener for future tournaments of this nature. But I hope advertisers take a long term of view of such tournaments and don’t just dump them. The quality of viewership – the real cricket fans – cannot be captured by mere numbers. The worldwide attention that such tournaments draw, the quality of cricket will only make such tournaments better.
2 Comments
The TRP’s are and will always be loyal to Reality shows..
At least 9 out of 10 people i met yesterday told me not to miss the AB & KKK episode in Big boss..i have not seen a single episode of Big Boss but this one… i didn’t missed.
Quality or Big Boss…ka door door tak koi rishta nhi hai. Public always fall for Masala & Ekta kapoor’s emotional touch type drama’s…vo kya kahtey hain Main Senti ho gayi.
We watch Cricket where you see bhajji slapping Srishanth …Tendulkar facing Shane Warne…Yuvraj hitting Sixes…and the best one Dada without Tshirt.
P.S- I have some cricket crazy friends ..they even know the names of the woman cricket team. Salute to their loyalty.
It’s no longer cricket. So who cares?