MUMBAI: In his career spanning more than four decades, no actor has been able to surpass the craze of Amitabh Bachchan. And now the shehansha of Bollywood seems to be ruling the social-media space as well. According to the “Bollywood Twitter Index”, a social media analytics report released by To The New, a leading digital services ecosystem in India, AB has been crowned the undisputed king of Twitter among his Bollywood counterparts.
The report is based on a research by ThoughtBuzz, the social media analytics’ arm of To The New. The Bollywood Twitter Index reveals that Amitabh Bachchan continued to reign over the micro-blogging site with the highest number of followers, clocking a growth of 87 per cent over the last year, followed by the Khan-brigade – Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. Making an appearance at number five, Priyanka Chopra is the only actress in the top five Indian movie celebrities’ list.
Despite gaining the maximum number of followers over the last one year with 151 per cent increase, Bollywood’s Dhak-Dhak girl, Madhuri Dixit narrowly missed making it to the list this year. She was nudged out by B-town fashionista, Sonam Kapoor, who hung on to the number 10 position with an 87 per cent increase in followers since last year.
Other significant gainers include Akshay Kumar with a 99 per cent increase and Deepika Padukone with an 82 per cent increase in the number of followers over the last year.
One of the most interesting things to note is that despite being virtually inactive, Aamir Khan has continued to attract fans, having amassed nearly two lakh new followers in the last two months. Aamir’s only tweets in the current year are about narration of his experience of meeting David Cameron, Prime Minister of United Kingdom and #ThankYouSachin during the cricketer’s last test match in Mumbai.
Other revelations that the study makes: Around 27 percent conversations that Bollywood celebrities indulge in on Twitter are about promoting their work or films; around 24 per cent of the tweets are about their personal experiences or general interactions with their fans; the rest of the Twitterverse discussions are based around promoting their own brands (9 per cent), favourite quotes (7 per cent), opinions about specific issues (6 per cent) and social causes (4 per cent).
Yes we have some challenges facing the industry. There is a dearth of good script writers, most of the stories that come to us are unfortunately cut and paste jobs, either from movies or from across different shows. Original thinking is surprisingly missing. Then if you look at the comic genre, there are hardly any good comedy writers, in fact you can count them on your fingers. So either there is a genuine dearth or we haven’t been able to scout & nurture talent as an industry. We like to work with the same people who are so overloaded with work and are unable to devote 100 per cent to one story (There ofcourse are exceptions to the rule). Production houses have become executors, the channel EP’s take credit when a show does well but blames the production house, script writer, everyone else when the show flops. We need to move to a system where the production house takes cent per cent accountability to deliver a show and its ratings. A system where they are both incentivised and penalised for performance. The channel EP’s must strictly supervise that all deliverables are met & quality check. The producer of the show must have a skin in the game so that they are fully involved.
Television is a very potent medium. The beauty of TV is, you take anybody and put them on television a couple of times and they will become a celebrity. TV fiction stars are more popular than film stars even though they may not get the same adulation as a film star. But the truth is they invade millions of drawing rooms and bedrooms day in and day out 365 days of the year in the remotest parts of the country. I have had legends in the field of art and culture or even very eminent people from different walks of life wanting to meet some of the characters from their favourite shows. I have seen film actors’ parents wanting a picture with their favourite TV star…The problem with TV stars is their life span is comparatively short and their fortunes are linked to the performance of, at most times, just one show. Once the show is successful some of them forget what got them there in the first place and there is no one to counsel them or professionally manage them. So that is another area, that we need to work on and develop as an industry.
