STAR One puts all its eggs in the Friday basket

STAR One has decided to welcome the weekend with a host of new shows. The bid to revamp the channel’s Friday offering will include a show on the supernatural, ‘Mano Ya Na Mano’, a reality game show with four anchors, ‘Jet Set Go’, a detective series, ‘DON’, and the second season of ‘The Great Indian Laughter Challenge’.

Shailja Kejriwal, creative director, STAR India, comments on the strategy and need for a revamped Friday line-up: “Women usually have the power of the remote in their hands from Mondays to Thursdays. Fridays are generally days when the entire family views shows together. We hope to make family viewing more exciting with these shows.”

The line-up starts with ‘Jet Set Go’ from 8 pm to 9 pm, which will start on March 26, replacing ‘Sarabhai vs Sarabhai’ in this time band. The show has four anchors, Gurdeep Kohli, Aashka Garodia, Tasneem Shaikh and Kiran Dubey, who will try and convince people in random public places to go for a seven-day, all expenses paid trip abroad to destinations such as Bangkok and New Zealand. The catch is that they have to leave immediately. The host who manages to get a contestant on the aeroplane first is the winner of the episode.

“The whole idea is to take people by surprise. We wanted a show based on travelling, but with a difference. That’s how we came up with this show,” explains Kejriwal.

‘DON’ is a detective series featuring Parmeet Sethi. The show will air from February 10, 9 pm to 10 pm, replacing ‘Bluffmaster Celebrity Special’, which will be taken off air.

The third offering, ‘Mano Ya Na Mano’, has Irrfan Khan as its host and is based on real-life incidents that are out of the ordinary. It may even involve incidents around famous monuments and other places in India. The show will air from February 24, from 11 pm to 11:30 pm, a slot that was earlier experimenting with feature films.

The last on the list is the second season of ‘The Great Indian Laughter Challenge’ (‘TGILC’), which will commence on February 24, from 10 pm to 11 pm. This time, the show will feature Pakistani participants as well. ‘The Great Indian Laughter Champions’, which was airing on this time slot, will come to an end.

Puneet Johar, senior V-P, marketing, STAR India, remarks, “For marketing these shows, we will be making heavy use of the STAR Network, with on-air promos across all the channels.”

Johar hints that apart from the regular press, radio, print and outdoor campaigns, there are some special tie-ups for ‘TGILC’, which will be unveiled only in a couple of days.

Johar says that ‘TGILC’ has already become a popular property in the Friday 10 pm band and he hopes it will continue to be popular in the second season, too. The other shows have been slotted around it so as to leverage its success.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!