Watching TV shows online!

 

When a show catches audience fancy, the atmosphere it creates is very unique indeed! In my childhood days, watching a TV show means sitting in front of the TV and watching the show at the specific time with all advertisement breaks. Once Internet opened up global world to us, it also opened me to other language shows like Korean, Thai, Japanese, Thai and now Turkish. I found i was more comfortable watching these shows than English shows as the cultural similarity was aplenty. Removing the slippers as you enter the house and wearing house slippers, respect to elders, joint family system, importance of marriage, protectiveness towards girls, beliefs, values and a lot more. 

Discovering online discussion about a TV show was a new experience indeed! I discovered my online community when I accidentally watched a hindi show. This was in 2009/2010. I was surprised to see a thriving online community who discussed the show which was telecast on the previous day, analysing the characters, decoding the symbolism and predicting the future storylines. I found the discussion and analysis were even more engaging than the 24 minutes serial. I was shocked to see a new kind of psychotic fandom who were ready to bully and harass the people who dared to criticise their favourites in this virtual world! 

As I moved from Hindi to other international shows like Korean, Thai and Turkish, I found the fans same. There are fans who love to discuss and analyse their favourite shows, obsessive ones who watch the show for their favourite actors and cannot tolerate a single word of criticism against them. Earlier I used to think these online fans do not translate to TRPs (the deciding factor for any show) but with the increasing use of online media, that has been proved wrong. Makers started giving importance to online audience as they too help in increasing the show's popularity. There are shows aimed at international audience - particularly korean and Turkish. With webseries and streaming platforms becoming popular, TV has stopped to be the only medium for these shows. The plot line gets changed as per the audience feedback. With online audience, the feedback is instantaneous. 

Online audience are a very unique group. There are shows which has a distinctive teenage audience who are very good with technology and ensure their online voice is heard. Some shows have a mixed audience but the voice which is very vocal online is heard by the makers. There have been quite a few shows which has changed their storyline or added scenes to please such audience. Online audience are impatient lot. Once a story catches your fancy, we become obsessed with it. TV audience watch the show - daily or weekly, on that particular day or time and let it go after that. I used to grumble at my mother for rushing back home so as not to miss her favourite show. But online audience are  a class apart. We dont have to rush back at the specific hour. We do get to see the show at our convenience. But we tend to live with it much longer than other audience. 

We wait for the weekly telecast with bated breath. We are eager to see the trailers of the episode. I am learning new words in the process - fragman (turkish version for trailer) entice us and some of us end up writing short thesis on it. If the fragman shows something not to our liking, the social media gets flooded by angry messages, abusive comments and irate posts. We can find some mature fans trying to calm others and make sense of all the drama. 

And on the day of telecast, online audience get to create live event - that is watching the raw episode as a group from live broadcast. Most of these international shows have live telecast to cater to online audience. Even Hindi shows have, am not sure about the regional shows. If there is a streaming platform, we might get to see it live. Coming back to the live event, we usually have focussed fan groups taking turns in hosting such events. There will be one or two translators, who translate the dialogues as the live scene is seen by fans. some of them translate it verbatim, a few gives a short gist of it. but the comments section of that live event can go more than 500 messages with all fans posting their comments and thanks. 

Once the live event ends, we don't stop, we only got an idea about the episode, we have to see it with proper subtitles. That will happen the very next day as these days subtitling is pretty fast. After seeing the episode with subtitles, review round starts. Reviews from blogs, websites, facebook and other social media and discussion forums - all review and discuss the episode. The discussion is not just about plot or character. At times it goes deep into symbolism and reflections. There are another group of people who love to watch romance shows, would rather prefer to watch cheesy romances with pull and push hero with kisses galore! Sometimes such groups dominate online media end up messing with plots at times as makers these days give importance to online feedback. Even before the review round ends up, trailers blaze through creating another frenzy! The drama continues, on as well as off screen! These days it spills over not just to the show and its characters but also peeps into actors' interviews, social media posts, messages, news about them

TV show watching is not as simple as good olden days. We don't stop with one time viewing. We discuss it to death but have fun doing it so. This blog is one such attempt! So can't complain

Look at the rambling message i am writing! 

All Images credited to:  https://www.fox.com.tr/Sen-Cal-Kapimi 

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