Weekend wins

As Star Plus conquers weekend eyeballs, competitors revisit their strategies.

Weekends are for fun, right? And this fun quotient can always be increased, right? Leading general entertainment channel Star Plus is in a mad race to do exactly that, in a bid to deliver higher television viewership ratings (TVRs) on time slots that have traditionally been reserved for movies.

With its spruced up weekend line-up showing prominently in the ratings, other channels are also reviewing their weekend bouquet.

Star Plus has managed to extend its weekday dominance to the weekend. "A 5.2 TVR in week 30th (ended on July 29, 2006) for Prithviraj Chauhan marks a jump of 48 per cent on the TVR of 3.5 in the weeks 22nd-25th," says a Star Plus spokesperson.

Star's weekend comic sitcom Baa Bahu Aur Baby has also shown a growth of 25 per cent, from a TVR of 4.4 in weeks 22nd-25th to a TVR of 5.6, in week 27th-30th.

Weekend viewership, states an industry source, is highest for Star with 30 per cent share (comparable only with the Hindi movie channels), while the others like Sony (16 per cent), Zee (13 per cent) and Sahara (4 per cent) command a much smaller share.

According to industry sources, the average weekend prime time TVR averages 4.5 for Star, 1.5 for Sony and 1.4 for Zee. Quite evidently, Star is in a position to experiment with its audience base.

"Star's experiment has managed to ensure the required audience stickiness, now the uphill task is to maintain it," says a media analyst.

That may not be so tough as competitors are yet to get their act together. While conceding that weekend television is fast emerging as a competitive programming block, Zee TV is not exactly rushing in with its plan to garner weekend gazers.

"It might be a beginning of a new trend but...we are not going to follow blindly just to get ahead of peers," says Ashish Kaul, senior vice president.

The channel is just consolidating its win on the weekdays prime-time programming. "Zee has broken Star's weekday bastion in the 9-10 pm slot and is working to crumble its leadership in the 10-11 pm slot too. Weekends will follow," says Kaul.

Channels like Sahara One are also preparing to "add" to the weekend slots, though there are no plans to dilute its Bollywood theme.

"Movies is the flavour for Sahara One's weekend and it will continue to be. If we have to add, we will do so in the Bollywood genre only," says Purnendu Bose, COO, Sahara One. For the viewer, more can only mean merrier.