MUMBAI: The numbers are in for "Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke" (JCPK), the gameshow from Sony Entertainment Television hosted by Govinda, and they couldn't have been better for the channel.
With weighted average Television Viewer Ratings (TVRs) of 18.1 in the five cities covered by TAM and 17.2 per cent in the cities covered by INTAM, Sony CEO Kunal Dasgupta and his senior team head for a brainstorming session at Sony Pictures Entertainment headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday cool as cucumbers.
Dasgupta admitted that it was unrealistic to expect JCPK to sustain such high viewership over an extended period but said he said the initials were highly encouraging. Queried as to what sort of average TVRs would be satisfactory Dasgupta gave a rather conservative figure of 8.
Results from the survey commissioned by Sony indicate the show enjoyed a weighted channel share of 57.4 per cent in the TAM cities and 45.2 per cent in the INTAM towns.
The cities covered by TAM were Mumbai, New Delhi, Kanpur, rest of UP and Ludhiana. INTAM covered Mumbai, New Delhi and some UP towns. In comparison, Star’s Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) on its debut day on July 3 had notched a TV rating of 14.3 per cent in all cable homes in Mumbai with a peak rating of 19.4 per cent at one time. In Delhi, the average TVR was 10.4 per cent and in Kanpur 18.3 per cent on the first day.
Star Plus’ audience share on the first day of KBC was 39.5 per cent, 41.1 per cent and 51.3 per cent in Mumbai, Delhi and Kanpur, respectively.
With an estimated budget of Rs 700 million a year the cost of producing the show is a tad high. Dasgupta, however, remaims unfazed. "We're looking for a whole host of spin-off benefits from the show. If JCPK succeeds as we expect it to, it will lift the profile of the whole channel, he said. As to expected revenues from the show, he said they were looking at Rs10 million per episode.
Dasgupta was firm that JCPK would remain in the weekend slot thereby steering clear of any direct confrontation with KBC. "We'll carve our own space," he said.
"We are looking to increase our presence over the rest of the week with two new programmes in the pipeline. They will will be telecast on Mondays and Fridays," he said. "Balaji Telefilms' 'Kusum' will be one of them but we've not yet finalised screening schedules," he added.
