Comedy Nights with Kapil creates another benchmark; registers 10 mn likes on FB

This is the largest fan base recorded by a television show on Facebook.

After notching high viewership numbers and consistently being the most watched non-fiction show in the Hindi general entertainment genre, 'Comedy Nights with Kapil' has delivered another record-breaking achievement, this time on the world's leading social networking site, Facebook.

The show, hosted by Kapil Sharma, has registered 10,006,163 likes in just nine months. The Facebook page of the show was launched in August, 2013 and since then, has been consistently gaining traction on its FB fan page. Currently, there are 1,004,169 talking about it.

According to Colors, the 'Comedy Nights with Kapil' Facebook page has seen phenomenal growth with more than 80,000 fans getting added every 24 hours. The show enjoys worldwide appeal with a majority of its fans being based in the Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh). It also has a strong male skew with 70 per cent of fans being males and 41 per cent of overall fans being men in the age group of 18-24 years.

According to Vivek Srivastava, digital head, Colors, the show's home page had started getting traction immediately since its launch. "Strategically, we didn't use FB as catch-up for an episode. We posted jokes, we explored the relationships between the characters of the show like Dadi-Bittu, Bittu and his wife, Bittu-Palak, Bittu-Bua. People tended to relate to these jokes which reflected 'generation gap', or arguments between a husband and wife and liked, shared them." The growth on the show's FB fan base is organic, he adds.

A typical Sharma joke and the wisecracks by his wacky family is shared about 10,000 times and generates more than 1.5 lakh likes. Interestingly, Sharma's personal Facebook fan page already has more than 10 million fans.

The channel has continuously promoted the show reaching the magic numbers on Facebook. It started with a contest - 'Want to be a part of the '10 million Likes' celebration on Comedy Nights with Kapil?' whereby fans were asked to mail their BEST picture on colorstv.fans@gmail.com to see themselves on the cover picture of the Comedy Nights Facebook Page.

Next was a countdown app which got activated the moment the page hit 9900000 fans. Once the 10 million mark was crossed, video messages by Kapil, Palak, Daadi, Sumona and Navjyot Singh Sidhu were posted to acknowledge the relentless love of the fans across the globe and making this landmark achievement happen.

Besides FB, the show enjoys a huge demand across other social media and digital platforms. On YouTube, it is the most popular show on the ColorsTV YouTube channel since it was first launched. On an average an episode posted on YouTube receives about 1.8 million views. On Twitter, every key character from the show including Sharma, Kiku Sharda (Palak) and Sidhu have witnessed a phenomenal increase in the number of followers since the launch of the show.

The Comedy Nights with Kapil mobile application also witnesses an average of 1.5 lakh downloads every month, enabling the consumption of not only full episodes but also episodic mini-clips.

Sharma, the creator and producer of the show, says, "Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who "likes" our page and shares our content with their friends. It's a signal of approval from the viewers on social media all across the globe that we are creating a product which people love to watch not only on TV but also consume it on other digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the mobile app. Though we keep hearing people saying how much they love our show but to see it in a number as big as 10 million sends a loud message to us. In successful collaboration with the Colors team and continued support from our fans, my little hobby of making people laugh has grown into a flourishing content on television, one that I will strive harder to better even further."

While Comedy Nights with Kapil has a separate page on Facebook, the channel is engaging with the viewers on Twitter through its own handle and not a specialised one. "We created a handle for Bigg Boss because there was a lot of content to offer to the consumers. For CNWK, we are using Twitter for live interactions while people are watching the show," Srivastava says.