The show about a married woman who wanted to give her salary to her mother's family glued people on to their television sets in the South. The script for the soap could have been regressive, but the appeal was pan India. The same story was retold in Kannada, Bengali and Hindi. The serial in question, Tamil hit soap Kolangal. Following suit was Thirumathi Selvam, another Tamil soap which mutated into Hindi as Pavithra Rishta.

If fiction had a story to tell, non-fiction did not take away the fun, too. The KBC Tamil equivalent with Tamil film actor Suriya is in the making along with Kannada and Malayalam. Popular format shows in Hindi too have found regional audiences shows like Deal or No Deal and Million Dollar Drop. The north-south integration has come full circle, at least on Telly. Today, just like the upper part of India, the lower half also had a compelling narrative of successes on the television.

You cannot look the other way when regional GECs in South, over the years, have emerged as key focus areas for most of the players. This is largely attributable to the connect with Non-Hindi speaking market audiences.

The South constitutes approximately 35 per cent of all pay TV subscribers, 36 per cent of all DTH subscribers and 34 per cent of all cable TV subscribers nationally. Availability of vernacular content is the most critical factor. In fact, viewers in the South are spoiled for choice with the plethora of content.

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