Actress Karisma Kapoor at a news conference where she was announced the third judge of the dance reality show Nach Baliye 4. (Fotocorp file picture)

Mumbai, Nov. 19: Thank the meltdown when fresh episodes of your favourite soaps froth up the telly screen from Monday.

Under pressure from channels suffering from falling TRPs and advertisers unwilling to shell out money on stale episodes, television producers and striking cine workers today reached an agreement to end the 10-day impasse.

The strike had brought the general entertainment channels to a halt, forcing reruns on television that left the soap viewer deprived of their favourite evening fare.

But the workers, who had struck a hard note in the initial phase of the strike, appear to have toned down.

Instead of a 24 per cent hike in wages with arrears since 2005, as agreed between the Federation of Western Cine Employees’ Federation and the producers’ guild last year, the workers will now get a 7.5 per cent increase. So far, there has been no confirmation on whether arrears will be paid.

“Due to the present economic meltdown, everyone is facing a financial crunch and producers are also not immune from it. So keeping that in mind, we have also compromised on some conditions and they (the producers) also took some steps which has ended the crisis,” said Dinesh Chaturvedi, general secretary of the federation which negotiated with producers on behalf of television workers for higher wages.

For the workers, who are on the rolls of production houses, the biggest relief is they will get monthly wages and no longer be part of the daily-pay regime.

“Workers will move from per day payment to monthly wages. Their work timings will be between 9 am and 10 pm, beyond that they will be paid on a pro-rata basis,” said Dharmesh Tiwari, president of the federation.

The impasse arose after striking workers demanded implementation of last year’s deal on wage hike. The producers in turn wanted the channels to bear the cost of the increase in wage bill by increasing their price per episode.

The channels did not agree and, after trying to unsuccessfully mediate earlier this month, stopped airing fresh episodes till the warring parties settled their disputes.

Sources in media buying firms indicated that hit by the economic downturn, advertisers were gradually getting impatient about shelling out money for old episodes that got the channels minimal viewership. Shashi Sinha, chief executive of media buying firm Lodestar, said TRPs of all general entertainment channels — GECs in industry parlance — had taken a 20-25 per cent hit since reruns began on November 10.

Under pressure from advertisers unwilling to sponsor reruns, the channels turned the heat on producers to settle the issue with workers by Friday, November 21.

“The GECs got together and informally sought co-operation from advertisers to support them during the period of reruns. We got their support. But they also have a business to run and this could not have gone on forever. We are glad the stalemate is over. The shooting for most serials will commence tonight and fresh episodes will be on air in two-three days,” said a senior official with NDTV Imagine.

Soaps are usually aired from Monday to Friday and hence, the new episodes are expected to be back on air by next Monday.

The only channel which got away relatively unscathed was Colors whose popular reality show Bigg Boss continued unabated. With no play-acting or shooting schedules involved, new episodes were aired everyday direct from the Bigg Boss house in Lonavala.