Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan is back with the second edition of his popular talk show Satyamev Jayate and says it is for “those who love their nation”. Since the actor believes that his show has all the ingredients to keep the audience interested, he is not worried about TRPs.
“Whoever is concerned about their nation will watch the show. An unbelievable number of viewers had seen the show last season,” he said.
Satyamev Jayate will go live on March 2 on various channels of Star. “Our show has a love story — an epic love story between the country and its people. We also have villains in it and music towards the end. What more can you ask for in terms of entertainment? It’s a Sunday matinee show,” Khan said.
The success of TV shows is measured by ratings, but Khan has no faith in the system. “The TRP game doesn’t make any sense at all. The Indian population is around 1.2 billion and you have just 7,000 sets (to record the ratings). On that basis you will tell me what people are watching, then tell me how funny it is ... So I have detached myself from TRPs.”
“I don’t believe in 7,000 boxes. I am just not interested in TRPs, so I am not rating the success or failure of my show on the basis of TRPs. We have based the success of our show on ground reactions,” he said.
Khan made his TV debut with Satyameva Jayate last year in May and the show, dealing with sensitive social issues such as female foeticide, domestic violence and child abuse, received a warm welcome from the TV viewers after it went on air on Star Plus. Some of the episodes recorded the highest ratings.
The format of the show, however, will be slightly different this time, being divided into three parts.
“We will have 13 to 14 episodes but it will be divided into three parts. We are taking three months in a year. It will be a month of Satyameva Jayate (at a time). Now we have made our website more vibrant and dynamic. For eg, if there are five Sundays in March, on all Sundays you can see the show,” Khan said. “We are giving time to the audiences to digest the topics.”
The first episode of Season 2 is dedicated to Dashrath Manjhi, who single-handedly carved out a road by cutting through a hill in Bihar.
“We thought we should start Season 2 from where we left Season 1. It’s also that we get so much inspiration from Dashrath Manjhi’s story that we thought we will start the show with it. Let people criticise us, laugh at us or say I am doing it for publicity, we will stick to our thoughts,” said Khan, who went and met Manjhi’s family in Gahlaur village.
But he is not ready to talk about the other issues that he will highlight on his show.
“The idea of keeping it hidden is that we don’t have an agenda or something because these are strong social political topics. If I would tell you what the topic is before the show comes, you may not watch it. You may think it’s boring. Because you don’t know what the topic is, you all will sit and watch and then you will feel, ‘Thank god I saw it’,” Khan said.
