By Zoya Anwer
When people think of entertainment, their minds go to the easiest entertainment available- Television and being a nation in love with gossips, drama and politics, our natural instinct makes Drama serials one of the most popular contents on TV.
Infact, most of the families schedule their day in a way that it won’t collide with the slots from 8 pm to 10 pm because it is the prime time for these dramas.
Have a look at which drama was the most and the least favourite in 2013:
THE YEAR IT WAS:
The year 2013 was yet again an ground-breaking year for Drama Industry in Pakistan, as the audience relished the taste of Turkish dramas and got so hooked that leading television networks had to launch channels specific to Turkish content only.
Surprisingly the competition was not only between Pakistani and Turkish dramas but it was amongst the Turkish ones as well.
Urdu1, the channel which has set the trend for Urdu dubbed foreign dramas, was the most successful of all with the highest ratings.
The rest of the dramas were from the assumed leaders in the industry like, Hum TV and ARY Digital. Geo Entertainment unpredictably remained out of the league and could not please its audience this time.
THE RATINGS AND RANKINGS:
The first drama, “Fatima Gul: Akhir Mera Qusoor Kya?” got the highest viewing and rating of 2.5 and also saw a huge response by the audience. The Turkish drama series had the very beautiful Baren Saat as Fatima Gul (previously as glamourous Bihter) and the rugged Engin Akyuerek as Kerim Illgaz. The story revolved around Kerim and Fatma Gul’s struggle against the criminal injustice with hints of romance between them.
Urdu 1’s aired Indian drama, “Diya aur Batti Hum” of Star Plus had the rating of 2.4 and the simple story of a couple got a high viewing in both Pakistan as well as India.
Even the forever comical, “Bulbulay” managed to give a high position to ARY Digital with 2.4 rating but Geo Entertainment was nowhere to be seen.
To everyone’s amazement, these were followed by the dramas of Hum TV and not Geo TV with Aik Tamanna Lahasil See and Zindagi Gulzaar Hai respectively, their ratings being 2.3 and 2.2.
Express Entertainment which is relatively newer than Geo, Hum and ARY got its Indian based drama, “Hitler Didi”and “Anamika” with 1.4 rating.
“Mera Sultaan” of the newly launched Geo Television’s Geo Kahani was deemed to get the highest ratings, however the numbers speak louder and the historical soap got 1.3 ratings even lower than the above two!
THE YEAR 2014
According to the yearly ratings of 2013, it can be safely said that the audience will still love the foreign dramas especially the Turkish ones.
With the raging success of “Ishq-e-Mamnu” (drama being aired yet again) in 2012, and Fatima Gul in 2013, Urdu1 will be bringing bigger and even better Turkish soaps for the people.
Other channels like Geo Kahani, Express Entertainment and Hum TV have also taken the hint and are airing foreign dramas of Turkey, India and Spain to receive higher viewership.
Pakistani dramas, as compared with Turkish dramas usually cater to the middle-class issues and are more realistic but the audience is apparently tired of seeing their daily life struggle on TV too.
Let’s wait and watch 2014 has in stores for us.
