MUMBAI: After a gap of two years, Zee TV is all set to woo its audience with the new season of its oldest flagship property ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’.

Produced by Esselvision, ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’ will start on 29 September and will be aired every Saturday and Sunday at 9 pm.

The channel has roped in 9 sponsors for the show. Continuing to present the show is Hero while the channel is in talks with a couple of brands for the powered by sponsorship and is expected to close the deals soon. Zee TV has got seven associate sponsors on board which include Ferraro Rocher, Tata Motors (Consumer Vehicles), Lux undergarments, Kraft Kitchenware, Toshiba Color TV, Dell laptops and Microsoft. Intel has tied-up with the property as the technology partner.

“We are looking for one or two more associate sponsors depending on the category. It will either be an FMCG brand or a car brand,” Zee Entertainment Enterprises (Zeel) chief sales officer Ashish Sehgal said.

According to Sehgal, the property had made around Rs 650-700 million in its last season. “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa is expected to make around Rs 1 billion this year,” he added.

The channel has sold out 70 per cent of the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa inventory, which is being consumed by the sponsors themselves. The rest of the inventory will be sold to spot buyers.

Marketing Blitz:

With plans to use the digital media the most, the channel has created applications like ‘Call & Sing App’. It is a Mobile + Facebook app which will enable the viewer to sing on their mobile phones, post the audio clip on the ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’ Facebook page as well as their own Timeline even when they are ‘on-the-go’.

“This app successfully integrates the ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa’ TV and web experience, giving individuals the ability to customise and engage simply. This will help to grow video-based user-generated content,” Zeel marketing head-national channels Akash Chawla said.

"The focus in ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’ is to connect better with the audiences, who watch the show and create a stronger relationship with them. Our view is that multiple touch-points can enhance a viewer’s experience. It’s been seen that rather than being a distraction, these interactive methods in the digital domain tend to be programme ‘companions’, enhancing the viewer’s brand experience. Our attempt is to make all ‘other screens’ an ally of the television instead of being its competitor,” Chawla added.

Among other initiatives are the ‘Hot or Not’ app where people will be singing one after the other and audiences rating them. There will be ‘interactive banners’ with jumbled lyrics that test their knowledge of music. The ‘Sur Tab’ will have ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa’ as syllables on a tab that can be arranged by a viewer to produce different music. Once arranged, the sur can be heard and shared by the viewer immediately. There will be different instruments every week to keep the experience a “refreshing” one.

The ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Mobile App’ will have a media gallery of videos and photos, singing and music tutorials by mentors, anchor and contestants. Here, the viewers will get an opportunity to chat regularly with the mentors, anchors and contestants. There will also be a ‘Did You Know’ option with trivia related to music. All these will also be available on the microsite, saregamapa.zeetv.com.

The channel is creating a roadblock on YouTube masthead on 28 September. It will also take-over on the ‘Yahoo’ site, through which the channel aims to drive maximum traffic towards the premiere of the show.

The premiere of ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’ is being promoted on DTH players like Dish TV, Airtel and Tata Sky. All Dish TV subscribers will directly tune into ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’ on Zee TV when they switch on their sets on 29 and 30 September from 9 to 9.30 pm to increase sampling.

The on-air campaign is being played out across Zee Network and also across news, music, Bollywood entertainment, Hindi movie and kids’ entertainment channels.

On radio, the show aims to “heighten interactivity” through contests, RJ links and creating characters based on the mentors.

Content innovation:

The new season of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa promises to give audience more involvement in the show. As part of content innovation, the viewers have been given the opportunity to evaluate the performances with the use of voting meters. They have played a major role in selecting contestants through online auditions as well where a contestant’s entry depended on the number of ‘likes’ or ‘hits’ their uploaded video generated.

Zeel – content head (Hindi GECs) Ajay Bhalwankar said, “With ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’, our aim is to customise the viewing experience with increased levels of audience engagement. Viewers now prefer watching content that not only entertains but also involves them. So, we have taken the interactivity route by understanding their inherent interest in music. There is a special round in the show where we will change the style and the chords of a song and the contestants will have to improvise it to gauge their knowledge of music.”

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012 will compete with big properties like Sony Entertainment Television’s Kaun Banega Crorepati 6 and Colors’ Jhalak Dikhhla Ja, which is going to end soon, and then Bigg Boss 6 which starts on 7 October. Star Plus airs its fiction property ‘Teri Meri Love Story’ in this slot.

Talking about how the channel plans to compete with the properties, Bhalwankar added, “It’s not about competition but primarily we felt the need to innovate. We wanted to give them a genuine reason for watching our show. The judges, band and kinds of songs have all been selected taking many things into consideration. Even the audience on the sets is real audience whose voting is considered.”

Taking the property to a bigger level, the stage set-up is like that of a concert with the musicians on the stage playing live as the contestants sing. To test the contestants’ music quotient and increase the level of competition, many elements will be introduced including changing the code or ‘sur’ of the song or throwing a request for a ‘jugalbandi’. A musical quiz contest will come on screens before every break and the answer will be given just before the opening of the next segment.

‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012’ will be judged by music director duo, Sajid and Wajid, lead vocalist of the band Indian Ocean Rahul Ram and music composer and singer Shankar Mahadevan.