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The weekdays' prime time is hurting Sony Entertainment Television (SET) badly with the lowest TRPs (television rating points) for the shows between 8 pm to 10.30 pm as compared to Zee TV and Star Plus, the closest competitors. Even though the channel is banking on Indian Idol right now for its advertising revenues, Sony is planning to launch a slew of soaps for the weekday prime time to improve TRPs once Indian Idol is through.
Most of the current shows including Kajjal, Shobana Desai's Thodi Khushi Thode Gham and Durgesh Nandini and Smriti Irani's Virrudh will be taken out of the channel to be replaced by the new soaps by August-September, 2007. Says Rohit Gupta, president-network sales, SET India, "While the TRPs for these shows have gone down, the focus will be on the new shows which will be launched once Indian Idol 3 is through." Currently, for the 8 pm show, Zee commands the highest TRP at 2.9 for its show Banoo Main Teri Dulhan, according to rating agency aMap. While the 8.30 pm slot is still dominated by Star Plus with Balaji's Kasautii Zindagii Kay, the 9 pm slot attracts maximum viewers for Zee with Kasamh Se. For the 9.30 pm show, the highest TRP keeps swinging between Zee and Star for Saat Phere and Kasturi respectively. The 10 pm and 10.30 pm slots command high TRPs with Balaji's longest running soaps Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii (3.8) and Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (4.4). For the entire prime time slot, Sony has lowest ratings for all the shows. None of its shows rating is reaching even 1 TRP, according to the aMap data. An interesting fact here is that none of the prime time shows on Sony are churned out from Balaji Telefilms. While the channel is losing on the weekday prime time slot, it is banking on the good TRP of the weekend show, the third season of Indian Idol. It is filling up for the loss incurred due to the other weekday prime time shows by garnering decent advertising revenue. Gupta further adds, "The money that we would lose through this is getting recovered by the superb response that we are getting for Indian Idol." Sony had a good prime time in weekdays when big-ticket show Big Boss was on before Durgesh Nandini took over that slot.
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Big Boss had done much good for the channel by garnering a huge TRP.
Arjun
