TV, Radio come in handy for Tollywood promos

Hyderabad: Television and Radio have come in handy for promoting films for Tollywood and advertising is treading through new and hitherto unknown paths.

Majority of the popular TV channels have one game show or the other, some of them in prime time, and film producers are cashing in on it to promote the film.

Since it is a game show the cost may not me much but only contacts and pulling the right strings matters to get 30 minutes time to promote the film.

It is not just Tollywood, even Shah Rukh Khan made an appearance in KBC just before the release of his film Ra.One and twined between the famous 13 questions, was the talk of his upcoming film and the female lead Kareena Kapoor coming on phone line and the Badshah shaking a leg with someone from the audience all but add up to the publicity of the film. Big B himself is part of the film.

Back to Tollywood, there are a couple of programmes where general public and celebrities participate and in WOW, aired on Friday at 9.30 pm by ETV, the new release fundas seems to be making a beeline and anchor Sai Kumar, has to but, speak about the film.

Latest in the list is Nuvvila team participating in the show on the day of release and taking good time to speak on the film. Ramoi Rao's Usha Kiron Movies has produced the film is different thing.

The same team director Ravi Babu, to be precise, also participated in a Cooking Show on another channel a day later and the music director and singer went on to share their thoughts in a musical programme on a third channel, not to say the theme was about the film.

The trend did not start with Nuvivla, it has been long we have seen almost all the stars, barring the top four or five, coming in to one show or the other to take part in the programme and promote it.

Audio release functions are other programmes used to promoting the film and some of the channels are airing it live.

Now the latest trend is close after the audio release and function is held to celebrate its success or sometimes naming at as golden disc or platinum disc release and every speaker praises the lead actor, director and everyone connecting the film and assures the audience or the viewers that it is going to be smashing hit and will break the (collection) records.

Now the entire publicity accent if focused not on the quality of the film but collections and just collections. The trend is visible is all the promos. The commercial wavelength is more pronounced than the artistic parameters.

Be it the competition among channels, the TRP-driven packaging of news or the time-filling-measure, channels are getting more and more film personalities to their studios and the anchors, sometimes untrained and unprepared, are going blank faced at times.

Ram Gopal Varma, who admits that he does things to gain publicity, tried out his own formula to get free air time some time back before his release of Rakta Charitra and hopped from one studio to the other in the eye of remarks and controversies.

He managed the channels in a good measure and timed it well even during the Bezawada shooting and he( who is the producer) was seen along with director on another channel as the release date comes to a close.

Much earlier, Pawan Kalyan, held a padayatra from Secunderabad station to a newspaper office near clock tower along with his 'fans' and held a dharna in front of the office demanding an apology for something that was, according to him and his uncle Allu Aravind, wrongly published.

He left the scene after a talk and shouted the name of film which is due to be released that week. All this was aired live by a television channel.

Coming to radio, FM craze has picked up and became very popular. This is being cashed in by Tollywood to the hilt.

Constantly bombarding the songs, paid or otherwise, and offering tickets to the latest movies to callers has been an instant success and the publicity exercise is very successful but it is limited only to urban listeners.

Question and answer session and good words about the just film are also managed by the PR department and the trend is catching up. With radio jockeys frequenting the film functions things are in the comfort zone either way.

Gone are the days of hoardings, buntings and banners, mobile or otherwise, forming the major part of advertising. Priorities have changed with the changing times. It is not just advertising in newspapers and distributing pamphlets but film promotion has gone into a new mode.