Buzz up!
On January 1st, there were hoardings that the color of TV screen will become red, that was promised by YRF TV's promotional campaign throughout the month of December 2009.
The hype preceded the launch of a five show bouquet for the weekend slot, on Sony, from the New Year, comprising Powder, Mahi Way,Lift Kara De!,Seven and Rishta.com. Buzz is that all the five shows will go off air by July and pave away for a new set of shows from the same banner.
Danish Khan from Sony confirmed in an interview, "The shows will not end abruptly though. They are finite concepts and will come to their logical end by the end of June. There will be more shows ready by then to fill in the vacant slots."
Further he adds, "There will be a new set of four-five shows from the same stable, to replace the old lot. It's too early to discuss what kind of shows these will be, since they will only be on air by July. But one thing which I would like to mention is that they will be experimental and from different genres that haven't been seen on TV before. Meanwhile, the old lot will be creatively analyzed at every level. We plan to come up with second seasons for all of them, since they have performed satisfactorily."
However he further admits that, "It's a gamble running five shows that are drastically different from the ones on air over the weekend. We didn't expect them to take a flying start but most of the shows in the package are registering a steady growth, so there's no reason to fret."
TRP's tanked
Powder, Mahi Way,Rishta.com,Lift Karade and Seven, in the first three weeks of their run, registered TRP's that were far from encouraging. The shows were pitted against one-hour soap specials competing channels like Colors and Zee TV and well-established reality show formats like Dance India Dance 2 on Zee. The YRF TV shows that had cost the channel approximately Rs.50 lakhs each for the promotional expenses, left the viewers unimpressed.
In the meanwhile, Karan Johar who has received a lot of flak for Lift Kara De, points out that he's not very conversant in Hindi and he said in an interview, "I am more comfortable speaking in English. The concept of the chat show is novel and noble though. And thanks to word –of –mouth publicity, the number of viewers tuning in is going –up every week. "