MTV is taking a new avatar, with changes in its content, to break from gaali-ridden reality shows, Cyrus Broacha tells Shana Maria Verghis, adding that he survived 15 TV years, despite his laziness.
TV host and actor Cyrus Broacha said that a lot of time he is, “prostituting myself, to pay the bills,” with public appearances in different avatars. And sometimes not doing anything very major. Cyrus was the sole reason we managed to sit through much of the Golden Kela Awards organised by Random Magazine, which he hosted. He appears on a satirical show on CNN-IBN and is working on a second book. “It is a guide to the Indian male.” Shobhaa De beware of competition in days to come.
Cyrus was in a shiny, grey suit that we could have used to light a dark tunnel. And at that moment, he was a few minutes away from digging into snacky eatables for fuel, before compering the show. Broacha said the book, Kal, Aaj Kal, which came out sometime ago, had two guys in the lead, treading on their not so light fantastic feet, through a world of films and politics. The narrative he had used was apparently “semi-autobiographical.” He was, “Remembering some very strange people that I have met, whom fate had turned into actors or a twist of circumstance transformed into leaders.”
Cyrus will soon be hosting a new reality show on MTV which he said, “has taken back the old team, to create aspiration levels for youth as brand value.” Enlighten us further Cyrus. He explained, “There will be a change in the guard at MTV with more emphasis on things like fashion. Not the relationship episodes where people spend their time hurling gaalis at each other.” He added, “Unfortunately, we all wind up watching those kind of shows. They are the flavour of the moment, like them or not.”
Cyrus, who told us MTV Bakra began while he was having a proper newsy interview with Bobby Deol, which turned into a comic interlude, that became a new idea, said it was true most Indian reality shows rehash material from overseas. “It is safer to use tried and tested formulas. But that is the state of our programming. In fact, it does not say much for Indian TV, that someone like me, who has no interest in work, has survived nearly 15 years in this business.” He added, “But what went wrong with our programming, was that MTV began to behave like a GEC (general entertainment) channel, instead of sticking to youth topics. I was in Dubai a few days ago and watching MTV there. Overseas, the MTV has stuck to youth content and doesn’t have anything that is vulgar on the eye. I remember years back, when I was interviewing kids on campus, one Hindu College guy swore in ‘MCBC’ style and we tried to bleep it unsuccessfully. We’ve come a long way since then to people like Rakhi Sawant who comment on topics like infidelity, that would once have been viewed as dangerous to our moral values.” Since Cyrus is himself a dad now, we said maybe he was repeating a familiar pattern of one generation turning self-righteous, after it grew out of youthful iconoclasticism.
“It’s possible. But when I said the ‘old team’ is back, I meant they want to tighten things up. And not turn them straight-laced. We want to bring new VJs in for instance. We haven’t had any hot females like a Malaika Arora for a long time.”
But isn’t the day of the VJ as an aspiration past its time? RJs are getting redundant too. “Overseas, VJs still have a role. Then they go into areas such as acting. Like Jessica Simpson. MTV US’ longest serving employee is Kurt Lorder. He was there for nearly 25 years, and he specialises in covering particular kinds of rock music.” Lorder was once editor at Rolling Stone. Cyrus continued, “But most of the veejays in US today work on a rotational basis.”
MTV will apparently have four or five new reality shows with some new content. Comedian Vir Das had said it was hilarious that participants put themselves through various forms of torture, only to get a bike in the end. Cyrus shared, “Sometimes you don’t even get a whole bike.” One show apparently had about “fifty bikes as gifts, but by the end, these were still lying around, because they had no engine! There were just shells. You were expected to take one to a factory and fix it up. I asked the producer, ‘Can I have a spare?’ When I heard about the process to go through, I said forget it.”
He wasn’t dropping names about forthcoming movie roles, but remarked, “I don’t know how the majority of people in films survive, because most of the time there is no work and you have to pay your bills. The top stars. A mere four or five, do things like cut ribbons at some public events. Then there are senior actors who have some bit roles. But what about those in-between? Life is hard. If you have a small family and you make two lakh for a film, what about the rest of the year? Sometimes you don’t even get paid when a film is made. Which reminds me that my book is coming out in a second edition, but Random House hasn’t paid me money for it yet!”
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