Exclusive | Riding on loyal audience, quality content: Colors' Prashant Bhatt

This New Year, Colors is all set to roll out their new offerings ‘Sanskaar… Dharohar Apanon Ki’ and ‘Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha Season 2’, which is to air from 14th January 2013 in the  9 pm and 9:30 pm slots respectively.  Bigg Boss season 6 has come to an end and is being replaced with the above mentioned soaps.

Adgully had an exclusive interview with Prashant Bhatt, Weekday Programming Head, Colors, to talk about his two new upcoming shows , family values  depicted in them and also about the new six day schedule for  popular shows on Colors such as Sasural Simar Ka, Balika Vadhu and Madhubala Ek Ishq, Ek Junoon , planning and more.

Prashant is an actor turned creative director.  He faced the camera for twelve years and also worked as the creative director of several TV shows such as ‘Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii’, ‘Kaahin Kissii Roz’, ‘Kya Hadsaa Kya Haqeeqat’, ‘Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani’ and with Balaji Telefilms. Whereas his first show as a creative head was ‘Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii’, ‘Bade Achhe Lagte Hain’ was his last show that he did before joining Colors.

Prashant is excited about his two upcoming offerings, ‘Sanskaar… Dharohar Apanon Ki’ and ‘Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha Season 2’. He said, “We are excited to set in motion this New Year with two new shows that come with a powerful storyline and strong characters.”

Sharing his thoughts about the two shows he went on to explain in detail the plot and content viewers can look forward to in both these serials. “Sanskaar is a heartwarming story that highlights upholding family values, traditions and relationships even while adapting to the new culture, lifestyle, people and mindsets. The story will relate to each one’s life who’ll watch this show, as the show explains that what remains with a person end of the day is his family, his upbringing and his values/sanskaar,” said Prashant.

With two different nations involved  in the story plot the shooting of Sanskaar proved to be quite an expensive one. “We went to USA and shot for 20 days and then in Gujarat too we shot for almost 20 days.  The story is flexible and if  changes are required and it would be possible for us to do that as well. Planning plays a major role  and since we get our ideas clear before executing it, our work too gets easier,” added, Prashant.

According to him, whether it’s an Indian set up or international set up, content plays an important  role  in any show. It doesn’t matter how and where the show has been shot because what audiences are actually going to watch and appreciate would be the content.

He further added “Somebody has to take first step and need to play safe with it. With ‘Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha Season 2’, we are welcoming the concept of Seasons for the first time on COLORS and are hoping that the viewer’s enjoy the double whammy that takes over from Big Boss.”

Elaborating further he said , “There were heated  discussions about the last season and if it lacked the stickiness factor and the answer to this is no, as first season of ‘Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha’ showed great response. Today the audiences are loyal towards the shows that they watch; they tune their life accordingly. Since we have loyal audiences and good quality of content with us, we wanted to take it a step further and thus we launched season 2 of the show.”

It is said that audience’s memories are short, but the fact is that they never forget their favourite characters on television. “We invest a lot of time in creating gluing content for our viewers and it's heartening to see that they love it and want more. When viewers love a certain character, they remember them forever, said, Prashant.

Colors is all set to  air popular shows Sasural Simar Ka, Balika Vadhu and Madhubala. Ek Ishq, Ek Junoon  six days a week as a New Year gift to their loyal viewers, hence making weekend viewing interesting for all members in the family. Speaking about this latest move by the channel Prashant shared his views and said, “`If it’s possible for me to deliver good quality of content daily to entertain my viewers on weekends too then why not  6 days a week. Whenever I’ve interacted with viewers they said there is nothing much to watch during weekends and get bored since they are so engrossed with our shows.”

“We are expanding our fiction shows to weekends as it will serve a complete course of entertainment for viewers of Colors,” concluded Prashant.