Colors’ Fiction Programming Head Prashant Bhatt believes in enjoying his job as he feels that any journey needs to be a fun filled ride. Having completed two years at the helm with the channel, he is gearing up for many more big things. In a conversation with Tellychakkar.com, Prashant talks about the channel’s latest offering Beintehaa, his views on the overall TV scenario and more. A lowdown: You have given an opportunity to a new producer Farhan Salruddin with Beintehaa… I love working with new people. Also, I am new to Colors. In fact, this is my first corporate job ever. The advantages of working with new people who are well aware of all spheres is that they have a lot of passion. There is no place for complacency as they also have to prove themselves and make a mark. That’s the advantage of working with first time producers, technicians, actors and the list goes on. Almost on every show of ours we have two-three guys who are first timers; be it the music man, art director or cameraman. If you know your job well, come to Colors and we’ll give you a break. You have also taken new faces in this show… I was keen to have a fresh face for Aaliya (Preetika Rao) and Zain (Harshad Arora) as I wanted to create a brand. Moreover, fresh faces come with no baggage and no name tag. So, the idea and fun part of a newcomer is that the person gets into the skin of only the character he would essay. Thus, the audience accepts that person as that character only. But at the same time there is also a huge risk of the new faces being rejected by the audiences? I look at this as an advantage. People are open to new faces. Gone are the days when TV was ruled by stars. People won’t watch the show because an XYZ TV star has a role in it. At the end of the show, seven days a week and month after month you’ve been seeing the same face. So there is no novelty. The show with the bigger stars too can flop and we’ve seen that happen in the past. So TV is completely ruled by content. If content is strong enough, people will watch it. How different is this story from the others? There are basically similar stories in the world; it’s just that one needs to find a different narrative style. In most of the stories, strangers meet and fall in love. But here, these strangers even after having issues are forced to get married. In arranged marriages mostly people discover one defining moment that makes you feel that you’ve met your soul mate. This story is about that one realizing moment. Is this story too going to be stretched like the others after a while? We’ve started a new thumb rule at Colors and it is to keep the stories running till they sustain; we do not stretch it further. In fact, we’ve made the same concept very clear to the producers of Beintehaa and Rangrasiya. So, what’s the given time-frame for these shows? The fate of a show is decided only once it’s on-air. On paper we write a finite series but once it goes on-air, there is room for enlarging and cutting it short too. A lot depends on chemistries, characterization and tracks that shape up accordingly. Above all, we are here for the public; so if you like a story, we are here to milk it out in a larger quantity. If you do not like it, we put a full stop. We hear that Beintehaa will be competing with Zee TV’s Qubool Hai? I was on the lookout for this story (Beintehaa) for a considerable long time as this colour fascinates me. It’s a culture that we haven’t seen on Colors for a very long time. So do I want to produce a show because a cross channel is doing it? Or do I want to produce a show because the story demands so? The answer is if I wanted to compete, I would have launched it a month after Qubool Hai. So that’s not the case. How do you look at your two-year old journey in Colors? It’s been a fun-filled ride as I’ve always been on the move. But, the day I feel the ride isn’t one I enjoy and is becoming stagnant, I will put down my papers. Do you miss acting? Not at all! I stopped acting five years back. There are rumours of Uttaran going off-air in January 2014. Is it true? It’s not going off-air. It’s been a steady ship for us; be it during IPL or anything else, Uttaran’s ratings have been steady. It has a loyal audience. Moreover it’s one of our brand shows. I was the creative head of Uttaran when I was not a part of the channel. So I am a bit biased towards it (smiles). What about Sanskaar- Season 2 and other shows that have not been doing well at the ratings front? We will take a call on most of the shows after the first quarter (March) of this year. As we already have four shows in the pipeline, we do not even know where we are going to place them. What is your take on lead actors moving out of projects? At the end of the day TV is a close fraternity. What’s in black and white is different from what works in your personal relationship with that person; the personal bonding is what matters. I’ve known Sriti (Jha) very well. Thus when she decided to move out of Balika Vadhu she was right in her way. Make hay while the sun shines. She asked me to relieve her. Balika Vadhu will be about Anandi and that’s a fact. Basically my motto is that one must be happy in what he or she is doing. If an artiste is unhappy, I am not going to arm twist him and show him his contract clauses. If you’re not going to enjoy doing it there is no point waking up in the morning and coming to work. Do we really want to go to court? Do we really want to drag an artist to the court? We are not interested in it.