Crime takes over telly

Fifteen years ago when B.P. Singh launched CID on Sony, the ex-DD cameraman-turned-director-producer never imagined that his fictional whodunnit would last so long and eventually become the face of crime programming. Many attempted to duplicate the format, but none succeeded like CID, which survived the onslaught of daily soaps, reality shows and a decade when 'K' shows clearly ruled the tube.

It's only in the last two years that the tide turned favourably for crime genre. From a single show on a channel, the crime genre grew to three — CID, Adalat and Crime Patrol — on the same platform. Yet no one really bothered to give it much thought, till Crime Patrol hit the top of 10 GECs shows with 6.78 TVR in week 9 (February 26 to March 3, 2012). The following week, it again topped the list. Since then, along with CID, Crime Patrol has consistently been in the list of top 10 GEC shows with close to 4 TVR. While expressing concern over falling ratings of reality shows with every successive season, a senior channel programmer in an informal chat recently predicted that in the months to come, crime genre could possibly give serious competition to reality shows in weekend programming.

Basing his programming wisdom on rock-solid performance of Crime Patrol and CID, as well as Adalat's steady run over a year, the programmer probably pre-empted the trend. At the beginning of 2012, there were only three crime shows on one channel, today there are seven on four channels. The new ones include Arjun on Star Plus, Hum Ne Li Hai Shapath and Savdhan India on Life OK and Shaitaan on Colors. So, is crime the buzz word in weekend programming? Or is it just a phase that broadcasters tend to cash in on for a share of pie?

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