Amitabh Bachchan’s KBC: How ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ Changed Indian Television

By NIRENDRA DEV

From Doordarshan’s Buniyaad and Udaan to the arrival of Kaun Banega Crorepati, NIRENDRA DEV recalls how Amitabh Bachchan transformed Indian television and revived his own career.

New Delhi, August 23, 2026 — Journalism often gives an “unsavoury taste of the future.”

The “Idiot Box” kicked up “idiots” among intellectuals — the glib talkers — those who spoke “anglicised Hindi.”

But Amitabh Bachchan’s KBC was something extraordinary. ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ — KBC — was the first non-fiction show to make it to the 9 pm slot.

Prior to that, we had soap operas. Even before that, a few Doordarshan serials were pretty good. Buniyaad was among my favourites. It dealt with the theme of Partition. Udaan was another winner. This was about the story of success preceded by a principled fight and hard work of a cop — Kalyani.

No, thankfully, it was not based on the life and times of Kiran Bedi.

When KBC came, Amitabh’s career was on the slide.

Siddharth Basu, India’s original quiz master, was the man behind the questions in KBC too. As the show went successfully for the first few months, one evening we met Siddharth Basu in Delhi’s famous mutual admiration club — IIC.

As an Amitabh fan, I quickly asked him during cocktails: “How did you feel being the second Prakash Mehra, reviving Big B’s career?”

He smiled. I remember most of my girlfriends in Shillong and Kohima fell for that one.

Around the same time, Basu told India Today: “It is not just another quiz game. It’s really about human drama. About hope and disappointment.”

The sentence appeared well rehearsed by PR guys.

Nevertheless, “Lock kar doon?” or “Computer ji, lock kar diya jaaye” were the new phrases popularised by Amitabh.

The power of it was intoxicating and perhaps as “influential” as he had told his father (Dilip Kumar) in Shakti: “Aapki ye baat bhi main yaad rakhunga.”

That too was a Gen Z factor of that era.

KBC on Star TV had given tough competition to Zee’s popular serials —Amanat, Koshish and Mehndi Tere Naam Ki.

Sony had Heena — and Star had none.

Kavita Chaudhary played cop Kalyani in the DD serial Udaan. She was also famous as “Lalitaji” for an advertisement.

Kavita Chaudhary became a household name across India in the late 1980s by playing “Lalitaji,” the iconic, no-nonsense housewife in Hindustan Unilever’s commercials for Surf detergent.

Star TV and the changing face of Indian television

Unlike Zee and Sony, viewers believed Star TV was an upmarket channel catering only to the English-speaking elite.

In media circles around that time, ex-IAS officers’ daughters and sons also became TV journalists and anchors. NDTV and Star TV News belonged to well-connected, jugaadu children.

There were Deepraj Dutts and Rain Desais.

Around that time, Sumantra Datta, who handled advertising and sales at Star TV, said: “The channel realised that it needed a unique differentiator. A killer programme with killer content.”

KBC, based on the UK-based Celador-run Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, became an instant hit across as many as 26 countries.

Zee TV was frustrated, and it tried Jackpot Jeeto with Anupam Kher and Manisha Koirala. It failed.

Before the show was on screen, Anupam Kher played “Amitabh” in real life. “I will go to Amitabh and take his blessings, just as Amit ji had gone to Hemvati Bahuguna before contesting and winning the Allahabad election.”

Many years later, other ambitious stars in Bollywood also tried their luck with KBC. It failed again.

The business behind KBC

Back to 2000, when India Today reported: “Call it experiment, call it strategy. The fact is that business is all about bottom lines. To recover the money spent, Star is targeting to sell a maximum of 10 minutes advertising time in every hour-long episode. It expects to recover Rs 15 lakh a minute, which adds up to Rs 1.5 crore an episode and a grand total of Rs 195 crore for the 130 episodes.”

Considering that the entire expenditure on KBC is Rs 75 crore, that makes Star TV the real crorepati with a profit of Rs 120 crore, it added.

In circa 2000, I was deputed by the Press Trust of India (PTI) for a month-long Defence Correspondents’ Course (DCC-2000).

Nearly 40 of us went around Indore, Mhow, Jodhpur, Srinagar and Mumbai for interaction and to get on-field experience of the functioning of Army, Air Force and Naval officers.

Virtually in every camp and every mess during dinner, KBC would be on the large screen, and military officials and all others would be discussing the quiz programme.

Amitabh Bachchan had not merely returned to television.

He had become television.

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