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Small screen, big future
Saas-bahu serials took a backseat at the television awards this year, as reality shows, comedies and news grabbed centrestage
MANJU V
Saas-bahu soaps took a backseat this year at the sixth Hero Honda Indian Television Academy (HHITA) Awards. The evening saw other refreshing trends as well. For instance, reality shows, news, talk shows, like never before, got their fair share of attention. Comedies like Naya Office Office, Baa Bahu Aur Baby went laughing all the way to the stage for awards. Instead of regular award winners, actors like Ram Kapoor, Rohit Roy and Rajshri Thakur won awards this year.
The glitzy event saw TV stars either performing on stage or having a blast sitting in the audience. It was as if all those faces that crowd your television screen 24/7, had jumped to life. Cutting across channels, they were all there — the saas, bahus, vamps, reality TV hosts, VJs, even news anchors, reporters, quiz masters — on Saturday evening at Bhavan's college ground for the sixth inception of Hero Honda Indian Television Academy (HHITA) Award.
360 programmes from 82 production houses sent a record of 2,707 nominations that had 65 channels participating. And with Bollywood fast becoming an integral part of the television industry, it was hardly surprising to see Shilpa Shetty, Rakesh Roshan, Amrita Rao and others walk in, fashionably late though, for the event. And needless to say, the event had Bollywood item numbers and spoofs of shows like Sony's Big Boss to add to its entertainment quotient. The awards were divided into two categories—popular and jury. In the popular category, the best actor award went to Rohit Roy for Star Plus' Viraasat and the best actress went to Rajshri Thakur for Saat Phere, which incidentally also won the best serial award. In the jury category, the best actor went to Ram Kapoor for Kasamh Se and best actress award was for Shweta Prasad. Vineet Jain, Managing Director of the Times of India Group was awarded the scroll of honour for being the 'new age media guru' by Anu Ranjan, President, Indian Television Academy and Pawan Munjal of Hero Honda. Aroon Purie, Dr Prannoy Roy, B R Chopra and Ramanand Sagar were given the award in the past years. Giving an insight on the future trends in media, Jain, the man behind Times Now and Zoom TV, in his acceptance speech said that internet, mobile phones and personal devices will affect not only how content is consumed and promoted, but also created. "Measurability of audiences' demographics, psychographics and their tastes combined with one-to-one communication in real time will change media unimaginably. In short, the environment will be one of convergence, co-creation of content and its delivery at a time and place convenient to your audiences." On the subject of code of conduct, he said, the way forward is to encourage selfregulation at every stage.
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