Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar striking a Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi pose in NDTV Imagine’s Oye! It’s Friday!

NDTV Imagine has completed one year. Have you reviewed the channel’s performance?

It’s been a really interesting year. We launched last year on schedule in January. We created a real furore by putting Ramayan on prime-time. That was a breakthrough differentiated position that we had. And Ramayan has done very well for us… it has been our number one show right through. It got us off to a great start. It also set a real cat among the pigeons... everyone rushed to book their gods. Apart from that we did a few interesting shows — Nachle Ve, Angrezi Mein… I can’t say we had a great year, but we did a good enough job. We still don’t have our smash breakthrough hit. But we made our mark and we live to fight another day.

What do you think were the key shows and events in the GEC space in 2008?

IPL was a big deal. It genuinely dominated TV viewing… GEC or non-GEC, everyone was affected by it. After IPL came along Colors, which garnered remarkable success with their show Balika Vadhu. It came and genuinely upset the pecking order of the GECs. Then later in the year, in October, two iconic TV shows Kyunki and Kahaani went off finally. With so many years at the top, they finally stopped. And then at the end of the year, we had this economic meltdown. So all in all, it was an eventful year for all the channels.

Do you see a changing trend in GEC viewing and acceptance?

Not really. All said and done, Balika Vadhu is actually how Kyunki started out eight years back. But I doubt Balika Vadhu will be on air for eight years. Kyunki and Kahaani had to go off air because they have had their run. When some other show does eight years, they should have the authority to talk. There’s no big change but audience taste keeps evolving. If you look at the song-dance-laugh reality space, the formats of Laughter Challenge and Nach Baliye have been duplicated so many times… there are six versions of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, seven versions of Laughter Challenge and seven versions of Nach Baliye.

So what are the new ideas NDTV Imagine is looking at?

Oye! It’s Friday! with Farhan Akhtar is doing well. It’s Bollywood with a lot of attitude. We are doing a lot of new fiction. They would have been all on air now but the production strike happened. That pushed everything back. Coming up in January, there is a show by Sanjay Wadhwa, the same person who made Balika Vadhu and Sath Phere, called Jyoti. There is a show by Manish Goswami called Dehleez. There are two shows by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji — Kitni Mohabbatein and Bandini. There’s a freaky show we are doing called Seeta Aur Geeta… we have acquired the rights of the original Hema Malini movie. It’s being serialised. We are also doing shows with Shah Rukh Khan’s company, Red Chillies. They are moving into TV production. They are doing a comedy for us in the weekends called Ghar Ki Baat Hai, adapted from the classic Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi. It’s the same creative team with people like Kundan Shah involved.

What does the future hold in the overall GEC space?

If you take the year 2007, it was pretty much the same as it was in 2000. STAR had been ruling the roost for ever and ever and everyone else has been a distant number two. Last year, it saw the entry of three new players in the GEC space — NDTV Imagine, Colors and 9X. They got launched at different times. This year will be a full year of competition. It will be a fierce year, surviving will be as important as winning. All channels now are pretty smart and we will be fighting slot by slot, show by show, market by market.

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