GECs gear up for festive season; KBC and Bigg Boss set to return

The Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) are continuously launching new shows as the festive season from August to January is the peak of all investments. This is when channels spend maximum on programming and in turn marketers on the channels.

In its race to launch best property during this time, Sony Entertainment Television (SET) has launched a promo for the ninth season of Kaun Banega Crorepati. In Colors, Bigg Boss 11 has also been announced through a promo. Both the shows have called for registrations.

Bigg Boss 11 will follow the format of the previous season where the common man equally contended for the winning prize with celebrities. The show always had a seven-day schedule with a special Salman Khan tadka on weekends.

KBC is also expected to lock the weekday primetime, if a source is to be believed. But Ashish Golwalkar, Senior Creative Director, SET, denied of any confirmation on the scheduling part. He said, “It has been successful on both slots weekends and weekdays. We will be deciding that in some time. It will be a normal 30-32 episode show.”

The KBC promos are a call for registrations, which means the show is at least a quarter away. This gives ample amount of time to the channel to schedule the show for optimum performance.

Highly placed sources in the channel confirmed that the channel will launch a comedy show with comedian Sunil Grover, who recently walked out of the popular The Kapil Sharma Show. Grover left the show over a tussle with Sharma since then, the viewership numbers suffered for a short term. The upcoming show may replace the existing Sabse Bada Kalakar on the channel’s weekend slots.

olwalkar also denied this information, saying, “Grover and team has been in discussions with us but nothing is finalised yet. Also, we have not yet decided on the replacement of Sabse Bada Kalakar but we have a few shows in the pipeline.”

The KBC promo doesn’t give out anything about the positioning of the show in its ninth season. It only confirms the presence of Amitabh Bachchan, the host who has held the show for seven out of the past eight seasons. KBC has had some of the intriguing and thought provoking marketing campaigns and taglines. Season one, which was hosted by Star Plus, asked, Nau baj gaye kya, while season two was christened Kaun Banega Crorepati Dwitiya.

Season two was ended abruptly as Bachchan fell ill and Shah Rukh Khan was brought to host the show in Season three, which told the audience, ‘Kuch sawal zindagi badal dete hain.’

There on, the show moved to Sony and the channel waited for a few years and brought back Bachchan with a bang and an impressive campaign, which said, ‘Koi bhi sawaal chota nahin hota’. Season five extended this philosophy to sport the tagline ‘Koi bhi insaan chota nahi hota.’ Seasons six and seven also had hard hitting taglines, that made heads turn, ‘Sirf gyaan hi aapko aapka haq dilata hai’ and ‘Seekhna bandh toh jeetna bandh.’

The last season telecast in 2014 had a heart-melting positioning, ‘Yahan sirf paise nahi, dil bhi jeete jate hain.’ All the campaigns have been conceptualised by Leo Burnett.

Bigg Boss 11’s promo also calls for registrations. Salman Khan, the host of the show, is also a huge crowd-puller. The show has been dealing with celebrities in nine seasons. But the Indian adaptation of Bigg Brother tweaked the format when in the 10th season it pitted a group of commoners against celebrities. India is arguably the only country to have made this variation.

Season 11 has planned to continue with the commoners’ format. The season will have a lot of common sponsors from the 10th season such as Appy Fizz and Oppo Mobiles.

Star Plus too is rumoured to have been preparing to bring its long forgotten stand-up comedy show, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, during the festive time. It will come back after a gap of nine years and Akshay Kumar has been reportedly roped in to host the show.

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