Meeting the big bosses of Bigg Boss!

Gaurav Khanna (right, in pic) who was crowned winner of Bigg Boss 19 with host Salman Khan

Could you be deeply interested in content that you never consume yourself?

Yes, if an estimated 500 million Indians do, in six languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam - given a round-the-clock programming of around 800 days, every year!

That's Bigg Boss. Hence, my incessant level of interest in it.

Back in 2005, Deepak Dhar, founding CEO, Bannijay Asia and Endemol Shine India - basically the exec big boss, behind all desi Bigg Bosses - tells me, when he bought the rights of the OG reality TV show, Big Brother, people thought he'd gone nuts.

"They asked, who will watch this in India? In the UK, US, Australia, it's risque; and is it even content?"

When Dhar sealed the contract in Amsterdam, the IP owners were equally surprised that he'd paid a bomb for a brand-name that he wasn't gonna use!

"And that too big with a double ‘g' - don't even know the spelling? But Bigg Boss just sounded so colloquially correct," Dhar smiles.

Big Brother, of course, comes from the poster, ‘Big brother is watching you' - the face of dictatorship from George Orwell's 1949 novel, 1984.

That's what the reality show's roughly about - a dozen-plus blokes, simultaneously fighting for approval, and survival; locked up in a 20,000 sq ft bedroom, hall, kitchen; surveilled under 90-plus cameras.

Riteish Deshmukh, who hosts the Marathi Bigg Boss. Pics/By Special Arrangement

The proverbial big brother holds the key to their activities for around three months straight.

As a social experiment, for writing purposes alone, I have been inside the Bigg Boss house, locked up once for 24 hours flat, with 13 other journalists.

It can be a killer, if you can't retain the competitive spirit, or a sense of humour about it. Is the damn thing scripted? Within that short duration, by late-night, five inmates got into a proper verbal-fight around me! You can't make this up.

Even until recently, I'd no idea there were many Bigg Bosses, simultaneously, in separate languages, in India - some of the individual production bosses of which, I recently got to moderate a discussion with, at the Vidnet Summit, in Mumbai.

As I write, the Kannada, Telugu Bigg Boss are still on; Hindi version just had its winner (Gaurav Khanna); Marathi season begins in less than a month.

Just giving a lowdown on how each is still different in its sameness, Rishi Negi, COO, Bannijay Asia, Endemol Shine India, first points me to God's own country: "There are lots of debates that take place in the Malayalam
Bigg Boss house. Those debates might become boring in the Hindi show, but they're relevant [to Kerala]."

That said, Negi adds, "What's been clear from day one is, never to mess with the main tenets of the show/format. Which is, isolation, non-interference, no talking directly to contestants…. These are some basic rules, over the years; and there's no deviation, whichever the language."

As Rohan Manchanda, who leads Bigg Boss in Hindi, puts it, "The silver bullet is still the casting [of contestants]." The TV-OTT viewer remains the obsessively voyeuristic big brother.

Karan Bhatia, overseeing the show's Kannada version, tells me, "The deputy chief minister of Karnataka starts tweeting about the show, soon as the episode airs. There are grandmothers and kids watching; the mix [of people on the show] becomes important then - you look for rooted underdogs from the heartland/villages."

The face of the season, of course, is always a movie-star - like Salman Khan in Hindi, who's obviously starkly different from, say, Vijay Sethupathi in Tamil.

Mudit Vinayak, heading the Telugu Bigg Boss, agrees with me that his host Nagarjuna may be relatively soft as a personality type: "But he has his [strong] points of view, and is clear about his likes and dislikes."

Likewise, the switch that took place from Mahesh Manjrekar to Riteish Deshmukh that Ketan Mangaonkar, who leads the Marathi Bigg Boss, suggests, "It was really a move from Mahesh's own firm, aggressive style, where he was ‘dada', to Riteish, who is more the ‘bhau', and will take care of the house."

The Marathi market, I learn from Mangaonkar, is a challenging one, given that they also consume Bigg Boss in Hindi.

And while the contestants get cast from the deep interiors of Maharashtra, the viewer expects more national figures in the house as well - as with singer Abhijeet Sawant, or actor Varsha Usgaonkar.

Similarly, Mangaonkar reveals the contestants themselves aim for the Hindi Bigg Boss, and make it too. The cross-pollination is complete, with the likes of Rakhee Sawant, Nikki Tamboli, Megha Dhade, Shiv Thakare, having featured in both the Marathi and Hindi Bigg Boss.

Where do Indian audiences consume the show most frequently? My suspicion is on the OTT, in their smartphones (Jio-Hotstar), where Bigg Boss gets livestreamed, 24x7, with a 20-minute lag.

Something that didn't exist, when the series started in 2006. As it is, what is social media, if not the whole world as a Bigg Boss house.

Even before there was near-universal access to smartphones, Dhar says, "In 2008, we decided to air Bigg Boss as live television, post-midnight, on Colors [TV channel]. The TRPs, in that hour, would touch 1-1.5, peaking between 12 to 4 am."

Honestly? I tell Dhar, I don't know a better measure to gauge national underemployment figures!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.