One week too early to judge success..

Sony Entertainment Television had completely changed its prime time bouquet last week. They had launched seven new shows of which Chittod Ki Rani Padmini Ka Johur, Palampur Express, Bhaskar Bharti, Ladies Special and Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega were dailies. 10 Ka Dum was the new big ticket weekend show to be premiered on the network, with Dekh India Dekh giving it company at the weekend slot.

The first ratings of the revamped channel are out and the GRP of Sony has risen but not much, and currently stands at 97, with a jump of19 GRPs when compared to last week.

An industry source says these numbers spell bad news for the channel. "If after spending crores of rupees on a re-launch, you just get an addition of 19, it's sad".

However, Danish Khan, Marketing Head, Sony says "Agreed it's not much and we never expected to do wonders in a week. We expect to get good results in about six weeks' time. Audience will come in thro' word of mouth and good publicity".

Another source says, "Normally a fiction show does take four weeks to pick up while a reality show gives you instant feedback; hence looking at that scenario, we should give the channel some time before declaring it as hit or a flop. However we have to accept that the initial trends are not very encouraging".

Khan was most happy with the ratings of Entertainment Ki Liye, Bhaskar Bharti and Ladies Special. "They have rated average 1.2, 1 and 0.8 TRP respectively. Our weekday fiction was not working earlier which is now changing".  Salman Khan hosted 10 Ka Dum which opened to 2.2 TVR which is good given the fact that it competed against finale of Dance India Dance.

However Khan did admit that Rani Padmini and Palampur Express have not done as per their expectations. "May be they have strong competition in Balika Vadhu.  We have launched a number of shows, some work while others don't", ended Khan.

Reporter and Author: Anil Merani