STAR One announces September launch for ‘Nach Baliye 2’

STAR One can once again hope to ride high on appointment viewing with the second coming of its popular show, ‘Nach Baliye’.

‘Nach Baliye’, the real-life dance competition featuring ten television celebrity couples, grabbed television viewers’ attention in its first season. With the second season of the show, STAR One, which will soon complete two years, hopes to hold its ground as a leading entertainment channel.

The key differentiators this time are that the show will run for 13 weeks instead of just 10 weeks as before, and will feature a new line-up of real-life celebrity couples. The jury will consist of Malaika Arora Khan and Saroj Khan as before, but Farhan Akhtar is being replaced by Kunal Kohli. Each couple will be assigned a choreographer, chosen by them through a ballot.

On being asked about the kind of competition he foresees from competing channels in the genre, Satya Raghavan, V-P, marketing, says that the only competition he sees per se is with respect to their first season and the channel is putting in its best efforts to better it.

Towards that, he defines the marketing strategy as one of three E’s: entertainment, emotion and experience. Elucidating on that, he says it will be touted as an ‘entire experience’ and not just a dance show.

The entertainment bit will be taken care of by the promos of the show. The channel also plans to enter the mobile and entertainment space later.

The experience aspect will be translated by taking the show directly to the consumer, whether at college campuses in Delhi, Mumbai and small cities, or malls, residential complexes and cultural organisations.

An offshoot of the main show will be the ‘Nach Baliye’ experience for college students, wherein ‘Nach Baliye’ couples will be selected at various college campuses. The emotion ingredient, says Raghavan, will be built over the 13 weeks in the viewers’ hearts and minds as they relate to the couples.

Shailja Kejriwal, creative director, STAR India, says that the format is more or less the same, but with a few surprises packed in, including a special Wild Card round. This means that viewers will get a chance to be more participatory in their voting. The Wild Card round will enable viewers to get one of the voted out couples back after the fifth episode.

The voting will be on a 50:50 basis, again with equal emphasis given to estimates from viewers’ votes through SMSes and voice calls, as also the judges’ verdict.

There will be three episodes per week, the main performance episode featuring actual dance performances, the reality special with an insight into the lives and experiences of the couples, and the voting special. The days for airing these have not been fixed yet.

While Kejriwal says that the show is targeted at the 15-24 years’ age group and will be a complete family entertainer, Raghavan adds that it is for all those who are young at heart. One key reason why the last season had such universal appeal, according to him, is that the contestants had someone as old and yet as young as Sachin and Supriya as compared to the others.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!