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COVER STORY

The Great KBC Effect

GK was boring stuff. Now it spells glamour and spins dreams.

Millionare Maker: Basu produces KBC for Star TV

In 1967, a parish club in Calcutta hosted the first "open" quiz in India and gave away a live duck to the winning team. The victorious quartet, with a few friends thrown in, had a sumptuous lunch the following weekend. Times have changed, and so has the prize. On October 19, an aspiring civil servant from Mumbai, Harshvardhan Nawathe, "made history" when he won Rs 1 crore by getting all his answers right on Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC).

Dream Run: With three shows, O'Brien has his hands full

If information technology began the knowledge revolution across the world, KBC has unleashed the general knowledge revolution in India. Four months after Star Plus launched its alluring mix of knowledge, money and entertainment, India is experiencing an unprecedented interest in quizzing. Hastily put together guide books, such as Bano Crorepati by P.K. Paul and The Next Crorepati by Sanjay Sharma, are selling like hot cakes at roadside stalls. More serious publications like the Bournvita Quiz Book and the Manorama Year Book too have suddenly shot up in the bestsellers' list.

Derek O'Brien, popular quiz master and CEO of Global Knowledge Portals (GNP), says the spurt in demand for quiz books in the past three months has helped his company overshoot its sales target set for March 2001. In Delhi, newspapers are reporting a sharp increase in the number of respondents to weekly quizzes. Fired by a zeal to test their knowledge-and with crorepati or clone-pati dreams every night-even enthusiasts from the mofussil hinterland are now writing in. In Dhanbad, a former Bihar minister, O.P. Lal, has started a live show called Kaun Banega Hazarpati in which the contestants' answers are met with "Seal kiya jaye?" KBC is drawing participants as diverse as a nurse from Liluah (West Bengal), a TTE from Gwalior and a grocer from Ballia.

In fact, quizzing has left its nurseries in Calcutta and Bangalore for a national flowering. A year ago, quiz masters in Chandigarh had to beg school principals to send participants. Today, the number of school teams has to be pruned to manageable proportions. Be it Patna, Pune or Palaghat, everybody's waking up to the relationship between silly questions and not so silly sums of money.

Smirking all the way to the bank are the people who frame the million-rupee questions. Siddharth Basu, CEO of Synergy, the Delhi-based company that has produced a series of TV quiz shows including Quiz Time in the 1980s and the Indian Mastermind, is the production brains behind KBC. Synergy earns nearly Rs 1.8 lakh per episode.

If Basu's Synergy is making big money, O'Brien's GNP is doing even better. The company has framed the questions for Sawaal Dus Crore Ka and has been signed up for Sony's untitled show and Koteeswaran as well. Isn't working for Zee and Sony something like modelling for Pepsi and Coke at the same time? O'Brien doesn't think so: "We take it as a sign of the trust our clients have in us." O'Brien, who also conducts the Bournvita Quiz Contest for Zee and the Zenith College Quiz for DD, is equally non-committal when it comes to figures but his company is expected to rake in close to Rs 3 crore for the questions being compiled for the three channels by his website division, kqscore.com. Clearly, for these entrepreneurs, there's no biz like quiz biz.

For those who rue the fact that the greed game is taking the joy out of pure trivial pursuit, there may be some welcome news. On December 25, ESPN will begin telecast of the School Quiz Olympiad. Its chosen quizmaster is Harsha Bhogle. From film icons to cricket commentators, just too many people are into questionable pastimes these days.

-Shuchi Sinha

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