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July 3, 2001
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Money > Business Headlines > Report July 3, 2001 |
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'A spectacular year thus far'When Star launched 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' and an all-Hindi Star Plus on July 3, 2000, nobody, including the Star team and critics thought it could be a runaway success. The rest, as they say, is history. On the occasion of the first birthday of Star Plus and KBC, Sameer Nair, executive vice-president, programming and marketing, Star India, spoke to Anjan Mitra. Excerpts: How do you view this one year of Star Plus and KBC? It has been an eventful year for the channel, programmes and the network too. Had the Star team envisaged such results? No. We had envisaged it would be an eventful year when we will be taking the battle to the enemy camp. But in the end, it has turned out to be a spectacular year. What was the original strategy? The original strategy was to use KBC as a battering ram and then ride with good programming on the back of it. KBC was the ace and we did no off-air promos for any other serials, including Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, excepting for KBC. The strategy played out to perfection. We did have fallback plans, but there was no need for the reserve players. Did programming investments go up when an all-Hindi Star Plus was launched? Programming investment (compared to previous year) doubled, but with it came stiff targets too. Peter (Mukerjea) told us to give him 12 top programmes out of Top 50 by June 2001. We had this by October and now we have 38 programmes in the Top 50 list. But Peter's next year target is to have 46/50 programmes by June, 2002. But this we should achieve by October. The idea is to lead in every category of programming, including music. This success cannot be just because of KBC. What were the other steps taken? We continue to innovate. No network had tried a daily soap at prime time, we did it. Movies were meant for Saturdays and Sundays, except for DD which long time back had movies on Fridays. We introduced films on Fridays. We also put a mythological on prime time. Now we are converting Fridays into a fun and entertainment evening. There will be no weeping (as in most successful soaps on Star Plus), but lot of masti whether it's a Hindi remake of Let's Make a Deal or the horror show Sush...Koi hai. But success has also made producers of your soaps and serials more demanding... We always have an in-built incentive scheme for all our producers, which is TRP-linked. We commission a serial at an X price and if the programme delivers certain about of TRP in the first phase, then the costs are worked out at the rate of X=20 per cent. It goes on like this. Balaji Telefilms, for example, has kept cracking these targets. Powered by YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ:
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