Oye, its Friday - Fails to Rock Tv audience Lets look at some historical data – A format that comes nearest to Oye, its Friday will be Koffee with Karan on Star One. In spite of having Karan Johar as a host (more popular than Farhan Akhtar) and all big Bollywood celebrity guests on the show it never crossed a TVR of 1. The platform was Star One which is as good as NDTV Imagine or even better. And in recent past, Colors also tried doing similar format show called Sajid Ke Superstars which didn’t add much to channel GRPs. After ignoring all the previous facts & evaluation, programming team still went ahead with talk show format with Farhan Akhtar & just to give some new twist to it they added other elements to the show like foreign performers, music performances & dances. Production house for the show would have charged minimum Rs. 25 lacs per episode. By that logic even if they produce 12 episodes it will cost Rs. 3.0 crores. Once show went into production next comes marketing activities. The focus was clearly on Top 2 Metros (and they didn’t have any option also as Farhan has only Metro appeal) as majority of activities were carried on in Mumbai and Delhi. Total Marketing Spends should be around 3 crores (minimum) including print, TV, radio, outdoor and Cafe Coffee day innovation. This is on the conservative side. Marketing spends can be more also. Post all this marketing push, channel fails to increase average reach for that particular timeband on Friday. Not even in Mumbai and Delhi.Other performance parameters like time spent and TVRs doesnt show any substantial increase And now comes the best part..after such magnificent show format and splendid marketing activities they have managed to rope in only one sponsor i.e. presenting sponsor LG Mobile. The deal will be not more than Rs. 50 lacs. The current situation can be summarized as An average performing show format Extraordinary production and marketing cost Below average performance on various viewership parameters Below Below average revenues on the show. And now when show is not working they are mulling to change the host..which will further pull down ratings.... During these times when competition in GEC space is getting tougher and tougher, when all channels are fighting for same advertising pie, Is it wise to experiment on different formats like Raju Hazir Ho, Oye its Friday? Or its better to invest in a Fiction or Mass reality show which can sustain over longer period of time and it has continuity that will bring in audiences episode after episode. Especially when key channel driver RAMAYANA is nearing end, flirting with such formats will cost a lot to the channel. Posted by Mehul