Can Nagin 2 bring back audience that Kavach lost?

Nagin rejuvenated the dead weekend 8 pm slot but Kavach couldn't match its legacy. Now, when Nagin is back with its second season, will it be able to hook the viewers once again?

Raushni Bhagia | Mumbai | October 3, 2016

The 8 pm weekend slot, considered dead at one point of time, was brought alive by the mythical story of Nagin on Colors on November 1, 2015. The slot, which was barely getting 2-3 million Impressions, garnered as many as 16 million Impressions in Week 47 of 2015, Nagin's debut episode.

After enjoying top ranking among the most-watched shows on Hindi GECs, Nagin saw its finale with 16 million Impressions. The show enjoyed an average of 17.627 million Impressions in the combined urban and rural markets -- 11.462 million in urban and 6.165 million in rural markets.

On June 11, 2016, Colors replaced Nagin with Kavach...Kaali Shaktiyon Se, a supernatural love story. The new show looked promising enough to hold to the audience to the slot but it could merely clock 10.958 million Impressions. The average till Week 37 of 2016 was 7.42 million Impressions in the urban and rural combined markets. The urban markets garnered 5.004 million and rural ones stood with an average of 2.422 million Impressions in these 14 weeks.

The success of Nagin prompted a sequel season for the channel. Colors had announced the sequel along with the launch of Kavach. But Nagin 2 won't replace Kavach, which will only be shifted to an early primetime slot of 7 pm. From October 3, the second season of Nagin will slither its way to Colors with a 24-year jump in the storyline.

Nagin had proved itself quite well in time. Kavach did manage to make a dent in the ratings for the 8pm slot. During this time, when Nagin was absent from the screens, viewers who had developed a habit of switching to the Hindi GECs at the weekend 8pm slot largely settled for other shows at the same time. Sony Entertainment Television launched its dance reality show Super Dancer a month ago on the same slot, which did quite well for the channel. Also, Star Plus launched Masterchef India on Saturday, October 1.

While Nagin has had the performance of a lifetime in just 62 episodes, it remains to be seen if season 2 will pull the audience back and whether it manages to surpass the first season.

Divya Radhakrishnan

Divya Radhakrishnan, Managing Director, Helios Media said, “Nagin did bring audience in the first instance. The 8pm weekend slot never existed, Nagin created that slot by sheer pull of the content. Kavach couldn't hold on to its story and hence, couldn't keep the audience. It is very simple, between the Nagin and Kavach thing. If Nagin comes back with a second season, it has nothing to do with the time slot and other stuff, it is to do with the content pull. Also, what happens is when you replace a Nagin with Kavach? The expectation is it should be as good or better than Nagin and when it is not, it's benchmarking was very high.”

But weren't both shows in the same genre and with the same kind of production qualities and a very established cast? After all, both have come out of the same production house -- Balaji Telefilms Limited.

Radhakrishnan suggests the story formats are different. “When you see a mythical (like Nagin), you know that it is not true; you see it like a fantasy and enjoy. But, when you see supernatural (like Kavach), there is always a fear of it could be real also. It puts away a lot of audience who would enjoy mythical. For that matter, kids also watch a fantasy like Nagin, but not a supernatural like Kavach.”

Planners say that the show has a high consumption even on digital, on the network's OTT platform, Voot. The show is doing phenomenally well in the other Indian markets such as Tamil and Telugu (as Nagini) and in Malayalam (as Nagakanyaka). Abroad, it has done well in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and a few countries in the far-East. The free-to-air channel of the network, Rishtey, also went up a few ranks in the recent BARC ratings after it started re-runs of Nagin.

PM Balakrishnan, former CEO, Allied Media and former EVP, Percept, said, “I don't think why it should not work. The second season will at least attract the viewership as much as season one, at least for the first few episodes. As for other shows on other channels, Super Dancer and Masterchef are both reality shows -- a different genre altogether.”

Balakrishnan explained, “The reality shows have their own pedigree of audience. But serials like Nagin, which will fall in the mythical fantasy thriller genre, have a different set of viewers. It is not a major overlap. But one will have to wait for the show to go on air.”

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