Reality TV has never been bigger. From the now famous Survivor and Big Boss (both the desi and the British versions where Shilpa Shetty made big news) to the talent shows like American Idol and “Britain’s got talent” all rely on the elimination principle. Here’s a bunch of willing participants subject to certain tasks, and very certain judgement – by a set of official judges or their own select set of peers, or it could even be the aam junta (hence the popularity of the call in/text/vote for me phenomena). Many versions of these have trickled down to Indian television also. Thus you have the Indian version of “Big Boss”, “Indian Idol” and MTV Roadies, not to mention the hundreds of inferior cousins that this trend has spawned.

It’s basic emotions here, because people are people – they react. And apparently watching people react is pretty interesting, because these shows have high ratings. As such these shows are many, and each episode is dragged out for maximum effect. They are also sometimes tweaked to get the drama going. So you have the planned walk-off, or the stylized protest – something patently false being presented as “reality”. However, and besides all that, you want the show to be “strong” i.e.; viewers feel for it, because that is when they will watch it. And you want the “good” people to win, else it may not be a show people want to watch anymore.

I follow MTV Roadies with great interest, since as mentioned before, it is fairly good for the soul to watch people being stupid at 18, having passed aforementioned age myself. Not that stupidity ceases to affect one now – no indeed, it can and does cross all racial, cultural and age barriers – but still. And right from Season 1, it seemed like this Show had it all right. A great set of characters – yeah, they might not think things through, but teenagers and folks in their early twentys do tend to have a lot more energy and earnestness. And a reasonably zany director in Raghu, who’s gotten kookier with time, but more on that later. And a fair-minded anchor. Ranvijay won the first season, and got picked up by MTV as the Roadies anchor. He looks like he’s got his head screwed on right, besides being athletic and a Roadie winner himself.

So the motley crew and the participants hit the road, travel across the country doing pretty interesting physical/mental/creative tasks. And it gets you hooked you know, because of the people. Some of them are nice and some of them are not so nice. They have their own quirks, and they react differently to different situations – it could be a stressful task, a fight, or just plain speaking your mind. And through the journey, and the passing of the days and the episodes, you come to know them quite well. And you know whom you back.

Thus you have: a following.

And then you have : popularity.

Note : This is Part 1 of a series, Part 2 here.