(2 December 2005 8:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Star India has re-scheduled its popular gameshow Kaun Banega Crorepati 2 (KBC 2) following superstar Amitabh Bachchan's sudden illness and his subsequent absence from work.

With effect from 2 December, the Bachchan-anchored show on Star Plus will be aired on Friday and Saturday instead of the original thrice a week (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) schedule.

A similar change has been brought in by Star India's Tamil channel Vijay TV, which telecasts the Tamil version of KBC 2.

"As an endeavour to provide our viewers fresh episodes of KBC 2, the gameshow has been re-scheduled to two-days a week for an interim period. As per the new plan, KBC 2 will run un-affected till mid-January," Star India vice-president, marketing and communications, Puneet Johar told indiantelevision.com.

With the rescheduling, Star India intends to keep the show ticking with the pre-recorded episodes till Bachchan recovers. Including the 2 December episode (the 52nd episode), Star Plus has already shot 63 episodes out of the overall 85 episodes committed by Bachchan.

This bank would have allowed Star Plus to run the gameshow only till 23 December as per the thrice-a- week schedule. But, by shrinking the schedule to twice a week, the channel is in a position to continue it till 7 January.

As per the revised schedule, the Sunday 9-10 pm slot will be taken over by the spiritual soap Sai Baba which originally airs in the Sunday 8:00 pm slot.

According to Johar, Sunday movie will fill the 8 pm slot. Vijay TV will telecast the spoof The Best of Lollu Sabha on Sunday, 4 December. A channel spokesperson said that there might be a different programme on 11 December.