By:Yohan P Chawla
Colors Marathi is all set to launch the next season of its very popular reality show Bigg Boss with Marathi super star Mahesh Manjrekar as the host of the show. The show is set to go on air from the 26th of May, 2019 at 7 PM. With the whole host of contestants the show promises to be another hit for the channel.
The show has been produced by Endemol India and Presented by Rin, along with Puraknik and Hello app as special partners.
On the side lines of the launch Medianews4u spoke to Nikhil Sane, Business Head – Marathi Entertainment, Viacom18 Network on the new season of Bigg Boss and a lot more.
On Channel Growth
Sane said, “It’s been two years since I have joined Viacom18, and the whole excitement of coming here was to build something from scratch and I think that’s a very interesting thing to be in a leadership position and still once again to start from scratch.”
“Our CEO Sudhanshu Vats had clearly envisioned the fact that we don’t have to get into only Marathi television but to build an entire Marathi space for Viacom18. By this he meant TV, films, theatre and for that matter even events and not to forget, original content on Voot. I think this is the most excitement thing that you can believe is that we can work in so many directions.”
“Although we know that it’s a long way to go but if you look at the last 12 to 18 months we have grown by 49% to be precise. Our market share today is almost 16% from 11%. So these are fantastic signs if the content pipeline we have engineered in colours Marathi.
Colors Marathi’s performance
Sane said, “The Marathi industry is about 100 CR plus.”
Continuing, he said, “So fiction is still the bread butter for Marathi television and continues to rule the space.”
“In the non-fiction category, Bigg Boss and Balumama Chya Navan Chang Bhala are the growth drivers for the channel. It became the first show on Colors Marathi to cross the 3 TVR mark and 5 TVR mark and now it is the number one show in that slot.”
“We have adapted it so beautifully that Big Boss season one had become the talk of the town and also became a family entertainment where a family could sit together, debate and discuss the entire show.”
“Ratings show that female viewers are higher than male viewers, which is a very important and a significant factor in terms of the advertisers. ”
Content pipeline
Sane said, “We recently launched a show at 8 pm called Jeev Zala Yedapisa which has been very well appreciated by the audiences.”
On what’s coming next from the channel, Sane said, “Bigg Boss launches on 26th May followed by a Mythological show Laxmi Narayan on 27th May. Balumama has already worked wonders for us. By July we’ll have a couple of more interesting concepts launching and we are certain that this robust line-up will encourage a lot more traction and help us strengthen our viewership.”
“From Viacom18 Studios we were able to put out 7 Marathi films in the last 15 months – Aapla Manus, Cycle, Ani Kashinath Ghanekar, Bhai – Vyakti Ki Valli ( Purvardha and Uttarardha), Kaagar, Thackeray were very well received by the viewers.”
New season of Bigg Boss
Sane said, “We have evolved this season and adapted to the small and very minute cultural nuances which play a very important role in minds of the viewers.”
Continuing he said, “There are a lot of international formats which come to India and people get excited about it but what is important that how a channel adapts it to the region. For example we took Usha Nadkarni as a contestant in the last season of Bigg Boss last season, who is a 72 years old woman. She has been a Marathi star for close to 50 years by doing theatre, television and films and the audiences love their icons and they love her. While we had younger TV stars we also had Usha Nadkarni ji in the house.
Importance of Voot
On the importance of Voot for the Marathi cluster Sane said, “Voot has created the kind of buzz and gave us a lot of insight. On Voot the show surpassed the region’s most watched shows Roadies and Naagin. The peak was about 55 lakh viewers a week with the weekly average being 46 lakh viewers.”
