One day. That's all it took Sahara One's Dial One Aur Jeeto to get back on air, live.

Torrential Tuesday washed out the live one hour game show off the programme schedule of the channel, but by Wednesday, the Mandira-Aman hosted show was back on its feet. No mean feat this, considering the massive coordination of electricity supply, telephone lines, call centres it necessitates. The task becomes all the more remarkable when one considers the fact that Film City still has no power, and no other shoot has resumed at the sprawling media city in suburban Goregaon.

Laughs Cogito TV's Shihir Kulkarni, the executive producer of the show for Sahara, "One man ended up doing the work of three people, but it was worth it." Dial One... has a massive staff strength of 90 people working on it, working the cameras, control rooms, call centres and research units. The lighting and music, played out by eight graphics machines, have to ensure that elements of delight, disappointment, surprise and suspense are in sync with the proper effect.

Even in normal circumstances, the set has back up for uplinking, in case the video mixer fails, as well as three sources of electricity supply, the cameras and the control room. Last week, Dial One... pressed into service two generators, installed a temporary air conditioner for the control room, and ensured that the telephone lines supplied by Tatas did the work of the grounded MTNL lines. "We have standby personnel trained in other fields of activity as well," explains Shishir, "which helped us multitask and cover for the guys who just couldn't make it to the shoots."

Among those who couldn't make it for the one day that Dial One... didn't air was anchor Mandira Bedi, who was stuck at Bandra and couldn't travel till Film City. The other anchor, Aman Verma, was at Lokhandwala Complex in Andheri, but he too could not cover the distance.

By Wednesday, however, most of the team reported for work and Dial One... is back in business. The set too didn't suffer much physical damage as it is located at a higher level.

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