16-Hour Work Hours, No Creative Inputs: Did Radhika Madan Speak the Uncomfortable Truth about TV Industry?

 
Radhika Madan

If you see interviews of daily soap actors, you will realise that the thing which Radhika said in a recent interview is something said by all the actor sometime. The OTT is eating up the viewrship of television as more and more people are going towards OTT and people are bored of the sanskar and drama of the daily soaps. 

The daily soaps now demand a seven episode a week from the production house and the actors work round the clock for it. 

Talking about Radhika, she started her career with Tu Hi Ashiqui which was a daily soap on Colors TV. She was asked about why she decided to switch from TV to films and then she spoke about how the actors have to work for around 40-50 hours on a stretch. There was no scope of the actors discussing the scripts with the directors or makers and give their creative inputs. And this is where she felt a need for change. 

She is not the only one from television who has spoken about this pressure or stress which the actors have to go through. We heard late actor Sushant Singh Rajput who also started his career through daily soap saying, “No one follows any rules when it comes to working hours… Recently, we got a complaint from an actor where producers made him shoot for 24 hours and were only paying him for the 12 hours mentioned in his contract. We have been trying for years to have fixed rules for this, but no one follows any rules regarding shoot timings. It’s jungle raj, that’s the only way I can describe it,”

We hope to see a change in the working style of the television industry.