Confined to her home during the lockdown, Gwalior-based 37-year old Mansha Kasture is reliving childhood memories with her 8 year-old daughter, Mishika, watching Ramanand Sagar’s epic ‘Ramayana’ on DD National.
Kasture is amongst the current generation of parents, who are introducing their kids to old iconic classics on Doordarshan channels during the lockdown period. If one goes by BARC India viewership data, the viewers have lapped it up.
Last week, a total of 170 million viewers watched ‘Ramayan’ in four days giving Doordarshan the highest viewership ever for any show and also for any show on a Hindi general entertainment channel in recent times.
“There has always been a demand from audiences to bring back the iconic serials of DD’s golden era. Last year, the Prasar Bharati board approved the new content acquisition policy. The crisis however made a radical difference to these content acquisition efforts. There was a barrage of requests on social media,” Shashi Shekhar Vempati, CEO, Prasar Bharati, told ET.
Prasar Bharati has lined up not just ‘Ramayana’, but also other popular shows like ‘Mahabharat’, ‘Circus’, ‘Byomkesh Bakshi‘ and ‘Jungle Book’. These shows have a broader appeal and a certain timelessness which are helping families bond together. “At a time when the entire nation is grappling with the pandemic, the shared viewing experience, which is now possible through social media, is having both a unifying and an uplifting effect on national psyche,” Vempati added.
With unavailability of fresh content since March 19th, broadcasters are now airing older shows or looking at web content. Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) has picked up three ALTBalaji shows to air between 9-11 pm every week night on Zee TV. These finite web series have never been aired on TV, and are customised for the TV audiences. The network has also decided to bring back some of its most popular shows including ‘Kasamh Se’ on Zee TV, ‘Sambhaji’ on Zee Marathi, and ‘Goyenda Ginni’ on Zee Bangla.
“We have tailored our content to cater to a changing composition of audiences. Our aim is to engage and entertain our viewers with all-time favourite shows, finite fiction series, the best of light-hearted content, specially curated movies, and much more,” said Punit Misra, CEO, Domestic Broadcast Business, ZEE.
Star India has also decided to air Hotstar original ‘Hostages’ on Star Plus starting next week. The channel has also put up a new comedy show, ‘Maharaj Ki Jai Ho’ at 9 pm, which was ready and was to be launched during IPL. On weekends, Star Plus will air big movies, while also bringing back some old classics during weekdays.
Colors, meanwhile, is filling the evening slots with old shows ‘Belan Wali Bahu’, ‘Bhaag Bakool Bhaag’ and story ‘Dil Se Dil Tak’, while re-launching the recently ended ‘Bigg Boss‘ at 10 pm. Sony Entertainment TV will have rerun of Kapil Sharma Show and other reality shows, apart from repeat of old shows.
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