It is said, ‘laughter is the best medicine’ and indeed it is. After a hard day either at work or in personal life, even a small joke can lighten up the mood of anyone. Perhaps this is also why Hindi television channels have upped the content when it comes to laughter-based reality shows. Not to mention, the genre in the last few years has given us some good talent in the name of comedy, and this too has become a serious profession now. One such comic-reality show which seems to have created a wave in the comedy genre is Laughter Chefs currently being aired on the Hindi general entertainment channel Colors, besides the OTT platform Jio Cinema. “Cooking is used as a prop here because almost everyone makes errors while cooking. Everybody needs cooked food five times a day, and there would be no one who doesn’t know about the kitchen, so the comedy of errors in a kitchen setup is far more relatable than anything,” Alok Jain, president – General Entertainment, Viacom18, told BrandWagon Online.
Interestingly, the media network claims that the comedy-based reality show broke records with 98.9 million viewers across India within the first four weeks of launch across TV and digital. Furthermore, it achieved the No.1 spot in non-fiction comedy shows on TV in the last two years with a 1.4 rating. Furthermore, Laughter Chefs recorded 687 million reach, 1.4 billion impressions, and 570 million video views on social media.
The show’s TV rating was 1.3 during launch week [Week 23] and went up to 1.8 during its latest weeks [Week 28 and 29] with a TSV of 40 at launch moving up to 42 in its latest week [Week 29], claimed Viacom18. The TV networks claim that while it is always easy to make people cry in normal life as well. However, making people laugh is extremely difficult. This challenge applies to creating content in the comedy genre too, especially on a large scale. “Not everyone laughs at the same jokes, so finding a content piece that can bring humour and laughter to a large number of people becomes a difficult task. Apart from that, finding a mass piece of comic content is also very difficult. I think Laughterchefs is a show that has performed above par across all mediums,” Jain added. Industry observers opine the last show that did well was ‘The Comedy Nights with Kapil.’ It was recently running on Sony before being shifted to Netflix. After that, no big innovation has happened.
Moreover, the network states that the show ranked No. 1 since its launch across all Colors Hindi shows in terms of viewers and watch time. In the entertainment category, the show ranks at the No. 3 position after Bigg Boss OTT S3 and Splitsvilla in terms of viewers and watch time. The last rating of the Kapil Show on Sony before moving to Netflix: 1.1 TVR for the entire season (HSM Urban 15+), claimed Viacom18. When asked about new seasons of the show, Jain replied, “We had only planned eight weeks for the show in the beginning. But looking at the great amount of success, we are extending the show for another 10 weeks. We also feel that to build it as a brand, we need to run it for a certain duration. Otherwise, it’ll be killed too quickly.”
To be sure, it all started with The Great India Comedy Show in 2004 on STAR One, followed by Comedy Circus. The show brought many comedians like Kapil Sharma into the spotlight. However, sustenance has always been an area of concern. Experts opine that firstly, it depends on the talent. Finding talent is the key piece here. “One interesting observation is that digital platforms have become fairly prominent. Fifteen to twenty years ago, shows like Comedy Circus, which is a recreation of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, used to be the only medium for talents to reach the audience. Today, in digital media, with influencers, there are so many other opportunities for talent. For example, Zakir Khan has built his digital fandom because nowadays, there are no limitations on the medium. Hence, any great talent can reach the audience easily, and someone with talent has no obligation to wait for any channel to launch a show,” he explained.
The reality show currently has Rajdhani Besan as the presenting sponsor, followed by VIM, Kent, Silver Coin Atta, Yippe Noodles, as special sponsors, among others. The network claims has been able to garner its share of advertising revenue. “For us, the equation is very simple, if we find more excitement, we make money as advertising revenue. It will only happen when the advertisers see value and come in. Today in the industry, there is no other product like this. And in the last 10 years, no such opportunities have come for advertisers to be on board and get their brand recognized. The big metric for us is how advertisers come in and benefit from their brand. For example, a couple of brands have ad space within the show. In every episode, the participants have to go shopping. There is a huge amount of products shown in this show. This show is like BigBoss, which is very brand-friendly because products can be displayed and shown organically. So, it is a great opportunity for advertisers to put their money on,” he noted.
Interestingly, the network believes that humour-based shows help in drawing the attention of brands. “It is a mix of feelings and facts that people’s memory of humorous shows are typically high. We need a liberal sense of humour in today’s life. Firstly, less forced humour will have a higher recall. An Oracle research states that 90% of consumers are likelier to remember a funny ad and 72% would select a humorous brand over others. Hence it is important to strike the right balance,” he added.