New episodes from next week

No new episodes will be ready for screening this week, though work on all serials has begun in earnest across Mumbai.



"We have agreed to the workers' demand of having one-on-one contracts," said producer Dheeraj Kumar, who was negotiating with the unions, "this means that a worker will have a contract directly with the production house.

The producers also agreed to hike salaries by between 10 and 15 per cent of current salaries. "This is how today we have begun shooting for all the shows," he said, "however telecast of fresh episodes will be possible only next week onwards."

He said that negotiating concluded with compromises all around.

"The issue was finally sorted after we had asked various worker unions to have a word with their striking members," he said, "we wanted to start shoots as soon as we could and we had gone two weeks without any shoots at all. We had to face a loss and each production house lost at least Rs 50 lakh for each week of the strike."

The channels, he speculated, lost at least Rs 30 crore each or more. Now that the chaos appears to have ended, viewers have only one more week of reruns to go.

The blackout of fresh episodes began on November 9 and was expected to end in a week. However the strike prolonged in the face of a hardening of position by the unions and their members which led to the producers finally agreeing to hike wages.

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