“I love telling stories,” says Jerjees Seja, JJ to his friends. “That is my passion — to tell stories that are spread out over different genres and connect with people. The magic happens when content resonates not just with one sector but across all society. I think ARY Digital’s strength lies in understanding its diverse audience and being able to do so, again and again.”

This is also Jerjees Seja’s strength. As CEO of ARY Digital Network, his line of work extends across a panorama of vastly disparate content, all converging under the umbrella of a single network. The stories that rivet Jerjees vary from season to season, month to month.

In Ramazan, he will be on the job from evening till the early hours of the morning, working with the team looking over the annual Shaan-i-Ramzan transmission. In PSL (Pakistan Super League) season, he will be attending cricket matches, inaugural ceremonies, impassioned talk shows about cricket etc. In the off chance that the country declares war — as it did recently — Jerjees will be there at the ARY office, all night if need be, lending a hand with the news presentation.

Throughout, he will also be overseeing a motley line-up of TV dramas, many of which become all-out hits. Now and then, the network will extend its repertoire to the film arena and Jerjees and his team will be there too, hustling through the behind-the-scenes groundwork until the movie makes its premiere.

The stories that he has a hand in are many: from Fahad Mustafa climbing atop a car and yelling “Jeeto Pakistan!” to a tearful Humayun Saeed alluding to his on-screen cheating wife as a “Do-takay ki larrki” [two-bit girl] in a controversial but very viral scene from Meray Paas Tum Ho. On the flipside, Humayun may be a scheming, manipulative ‘love guru’, hoodwinking Mahira Khan in a movie that has stormed the box office.

A bonanza of celebrities are associated with the network’s biggest hits while Jerjees Seja remains the constant linchpin, puppeteering behind the scenes, working with different teams, creating content that is memorable.

The CEO of ARY Digital Network oversees vastly disparate content, from television dramas, news presentations and game shows to cricket league promotions, Ramazan transmissions and blockbuster films. The common thread in all of them is telling stories the audience wants to see and hear, he says. But how does Jerjees Seja manage to do everything?

I meet him while he’s taking a breather from his round-the-clock, breakneck schedule. Sipping his coffee, he tells me that he’s just returned from one work trip and is about to set forth on another. He doesn’t look tired, though. Perhaps because he loves what he does, telling all these ‘stories’ that he is passionate about.

Isn’t it difficult, though, switching from one genre to another, one narrative form to the other? “I love change,” Jerjees shrugs. “And Salman Iqbal bhai (CEO of the ARY group) has been instrumental in my career growth. He gave me the ground and let me have the freedom to play as I like.”

He’s playing in many fields, though, I point out. Wouldn’t he be able to achieve even more should he place his focus on just on genre? “But I am the coach, I am not the athlete,” Jerjees points out to me. “I am making people run, not running myself. I am just giving directions and doing my best to make sure they win. We all win.”

In Pakistan, awards are almost always biased and the mechanisms behind them are not transparent. If we get an award, that’s great, it is an acknowledgement of our work. But that’s it.“

Does he have any one favourite genre? “These are all my pet projects. I can’t choose, for instance, between Jeeto Pakistan and our dramas or our reality show Tamasha.

“What drives me, though, is how to make sure that the next project is just as successful as the previous one. I think this is why ARY Digital is at the top at this point,” he says. “We are always trying to stay a step ahead, and making an effort to ensure that every new project is a success. We keep experimenting.

“Before we started off our reality show Tamasha, we had been researching the format. We had acquired the franchise of Big Brother about 10 years ago and we only launched our own show, based on the same blueprint, once we were ready.”

He continues, referring to the network’s recent spate of hit dramas: “When Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum was a hit, I was fretting over whether the next drama in the works, Bismil, would be as successful. The day we get complacent or overconfident, that’s the day that our downfall will begin.”

Measuring ‘success’

Jerjees says that ARY Digital is at the top. Other channel heads often profess the same about their own platforms. What is his measure for allocating the top position to his own network?

“More than anything else, word of mouth,” he says. “When something is successful, the numbers show it, but they are not the only measure. It’s especially a boost when people start talking about a project, there is noise on social media, you go to a restaurant and you hear people sitting on the other table talking about one of the dramas on your channel. That acknowledgement is the real measure of success.

“We may promote a drama during its initial episodes and start off memes but we can’t buy X [formerly Twitter] trends every day. If people love the content, conversations surrounding it start off organically.”

There are other measures, too. “Ratings are an accurate measure,” he says. “They operate the way a focus group does. A handful of people are selected and they represent an entire population. The data collected from them gives you an approximate figure representing a project’s success, not the exact 100 percent.”

I ask him about YouTube views; it’s a well-known fact that they can be purchased. “Yes, they can be purchased, but a number of factors add up to indicate a project’s success. If a drama has raked in high views on YouTube but no one’s talking about it, you know that the views are fake and it isn’t actually a hit.”

And does he consider awards to be a parameter for success? “Unfortunately, no,” he says. “In Pakistan, awards are almost always biased and the mechanisms behind them are not transparent. If we get an award, that’s great, it is an acknowledgement of our work. But that’s it.”

Jerjees adds, “If awards were my sole criteria, I would be making very different types of projects. My criteria, when coming up with content, is to cater to the masses and not just certain classes. Producer Sajjad Gul, who I consider my guru, once told me that storylines all around the world revolve around three premises: love, money and power. The way these stories are treated is what makes them different.”

Knowing the audience

Can he tell when a script is not likely to click with the audience?

“You can never tell for sure but, yes, we have the research and the experience to have a fair idea about the stories that the audience wants to see,” says Jerjees. “There are times when other channels have introduced dramas with storylines that they say are ‘different’. What they don’t realise is that there is a reason why we haven’t delved towards such stories.

“At some point or the other, we may have experimented with a similar story or researched into the concept, and it must not have worked out. Instead of learning from the past mistakes of others, they go on and work on ‘different’ subject matter, which then flops. It is one of the reasons why so many new channels tend to fade out after an initial run.”

He cites an example: “We know that horror is a genre that won’t be massively popular because it will only be watched by a niche audience. So, when we work on a drama that has a horror angle to it, we package it in a way that the audience can relate to it. Bandish, for instance, had a horror theme, merged with the politics within a family. As soon as we delve too much towards complete horror, we know that drama won’t work as well.”

Over the span of his 28 years-long career, has he seen a change in the drama-watching diaspora? “It has now become cool to watch dramas,” he says, “There was a time when people would comment that Pakistani dramas were great back in the ’70s and ’80s, implying that they were no longer worth watching. People would be embarrassed of owning our dramas. Over time, though, the entire TV drama industry has worked very hard on improving standards and, now, people across all stratas are watching our dramas, around the world.”

A large chunk of Pakistani dramas’ core YouTube audience would be watching from India, prior to the ban placed by the Indian government as a consequence of the recent conflict. Has this affected ARY Digital’s YouTube earnings? “India was one of the major contributors for YouTube earnings,” Jerjees accepts, “but fortunately, we have many other revenue streams in place, so we haven’t gotten majorly affected.”

What have been some of the biggest professional challenges that he has faced?

“There have been many,” he says, “but one of the biggest challenges was airing the Jeeto Pakistan show during the coronavirus pandemic. Ramazan came along only about a month after Covid-19 had struck and we were contemplating discontinuing Jeeto Pakistan for that year. It is a show that is dependent entirely on interactions with a live audience and, with social distancing strictly in place, we didn’t know what to do. We also knew that people connected their Ramazan routines with the show, and it would depress them should we discontinue. That is when we decided that the show must go on.

“We came up with the concept of the Jeeto Pakistan League, where the host Fahad Mustafa and a select group of celebrity ‘captains’ would play various games while maintaining a distance from each other. We were lucky — while others got sick, the hosts of the Shaan-i-Ramzan transmission, Fahad Mustafa and Waseem Badami, did not. We were able to fulfill our yearly goal that our audience should celebrate the month of Ramazan with us. We gave people hope that, despite everything, life was moving on and, soon, things would return to normal.”

Despite ARY Digital’s positioning as one of the country’s most powerful networks, one hears rumours now and then of stars walking out of a drama after having signed on to it and, maybe, even filming it for a few days. How does the network deal with such situations?

“It’s simple, you have to give respect to get respect,” says Jerjees. “It’s not about how popular the celebrity is or ARY’s standing in the industry, it’s just wrong ethically and legally to walk out of a project midway. Once you have signed on, you have to follow through with your commitment. We definitely become less inclined towards working with the actor in the future.”

On the other hand, some of the country’s biggest stars associate themselves with the network. Many, in fact, have built their careers primarily through their work with ARY Digital; for instance, Fahad Mustafa, Waseem Badami and even the late Junaid Jamshed. Humayun Saeed — except for when he got waylaid with the drama Gentleman — is associated with the network, as is director Nadeem Baig. Celebrities are generally notorious for being demanding and throwing tantrums. How does the network inspire such loyalty amongst these A-listers?

“This is an indication of the core values behind the network,” smiles Jerjees. “When we are all together, we are more like a group of friends rather than a network and its employees. All the stars that you see watching the PSL matches cheering for our teams are there because they want to be, not because they work for the network. We have all grown together and the unity that we have with the entertainment fraternity is one of ARY’s strengths.”

Speaking of ARY’s strengths, Jerjees Seja — still so passionate about all that he does, with an instinctive vision for knowing what the audience wants — is also one of them. He won’t say it himself. So I’ll write it here for him.

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 22nd, 2025