Comedy shows slip in ratings as they fail to keep audience hooked

The results of the comedy war between Chutki and Kapil Sharma are out. The latest ratings have revealed that the newly launched show Mad In India failed to outshine the popularity of laugh riot Comedy Nights With Kapil on Colors. 
It seems like the sudden spate of comedy shows on various entertainment channels have led to an overkill of the genre. 

According to TVT data sourced from TAM subscribers last week, the latest ratings of Comedy Nights featuring Kirron Kher and Malaika Arora received 8.5 millions viewership while Star Plus' latest offering to the comedy genre Mad In India, featuring Govinda and Karishma Kapoor received net viewership of 3.2 million. 

Followers of comedy shows have been inquisitive about Sunil Grover's new drag avatar Chutki in his talk show Mad In India ever since he made an exit from Comedy Nights With Kapil, where he played the character Gutthi. Despite the hype and publicity, the show anchored by Manish Paul opened to a dismal response. The opening episode of featuring Baba Ramdev, received 5.7 TVM (Total Viewership in Millions) while Kapil's show's average rating got hiked to 9.6 TVM the same week.opened to a dismal response. The opening episode of featuring Baba Ramdev, received 5.7 TVM (Total Viewership in Millions) while Kapil's show's average rating got hiked to 9.6 TVM the same week. 

"Comedy needs regular innovation, and the makers need to constantly come up with innovative ideas to retain the interest of the audience. Popularity of the shows are specific to each stand-up comedian's fan following," said Krishna Abhishek, who has been part of Sony's show Comedy Circus, the top ranked comedy show for the last seven years. With the onset of several comedy shows, Sony's Comedy Circus has seen a steep downfall in the ratings. The show which features artists such as Krishna Abhishek, Bharti Singh, Rajeev Thakur, among others, receives an average viewership of 1.5-1.8 million. 



SAB's long running popular daily soap Taarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashma has also witnessed a slight drop in viewership, lately. Positioned among the top ten shows on TV, Taarak received average viewership of 7.3 TVM in the last few weeks, as opposed it's once average viewership of 7.7 - 7.9 million.