I don't like shows which are predictable and not fresh : Saurabh Tewari

Saurabh Tewari is a Bachelor of Arts from Lucknow. He started his television career as an ad director and later moved on to take up writing. In 2006 he joined Zee Telefilms as Assistant Vice-President of Programming and later was appointed as the Associate Vice President and Creative Director of Colors. Currently the man of ideas is the Programming Head (Fiction) of Imagine. Saurabh has played an important role in launching many shows and subsequent success of every channel he has been associated with. In an exclusive interview with TellyChakkar Saurabh talks about upcoming shows and shares his piece of mind on how to judge a show. Excerpts from the interview… Tell us something about your new show Haar Jeet… The story will focus on issues of exploitation of kids on reality TV and daily soaps. It talks about how parents try living their dreams through their kids. Jannat Zubair Rahmani will be seen playing an important character called Ishita and there will also be a new girl Khushali who will play her sister named Meghna. The concept of the show is quite unique. Comment. Personally I don’t like shows which are predictable and not fresh. I have been working on the concept of Haar Jeet for almost three years now. I felt this was the right time to launch it. So I called up the production house and asked them to work on the project. The concept may be new on screen but it’s not new in real life. So people can relate to it. Are the current fiction shows doing well for the channel? Preeto is doing well, Chandragupta Maurya is good, Beend Banoongaa Ghodi Chadhunga has also picked up lately and it’s too early to comment on Dharampatni. So overall I think the shows are doing well. It usually takes around six to eight months to gaze whether a show will click or not. Beend was launched while IPL was on so it failed to gain high TRPs initially. However the numbers are good now. Furthermore, I am very confident that Haar Jeet will be liked by the masses. Imagine is known to bank on reality shows more than fiction shows. Comment. Currently we have just fiction shows on the channel and yet Imagine is gaining around 75-80 GRPs. We do not even air blockbuster movies because that is not part of our strategy currently. Yet in entirety our GRP is no less than 140. What’s in store in the future? We are now launching Haar Jeet and after that we will come up with two more reality shows. Our target is to launch a new show every 45 days. So in the month of November-December we will launch a show or two. Does this mean you will pull off some of your ongoing shows? No. The new shows can be aired on weekends or on late prime time slot. Apart from that we have to keep analysing our existing shows. Few shows are good while others prove to be disasters. But as of now we aren’t planning to pull off any ongoing show. Even Haar Jeet is coming on a vacant slot. What about reality shows? See the thing is we are discussing a lot about concepts of reality shows but nothing has been finalised yet. Reality shows are just a part of ten other jobs that we are working on currently. You had earlier mentioned that Imagine was going wrong with its programming due to lack of audience feedbacks. Are you working on it now? It’s not that we do not take feedbacks from viewers but at times analysing and understanding those feedbacks can go wrong. Feedbacks are important but the creative team and the professionals on the sets also have a link with the audience and understand them as they are the ones who work on the story on a day-to-day basis. Chandragupta Maurya has been high on TRPs. Is it the channel’s favourite show? I don’t take into consideration the current numbers of any show. I take into account those shows that have made slow and steady improvement. Preeto is a show that started with 0.4 ratings and in a span of six weeks it has touched 1.0. I would bet on a show like Preeto and as far as Chandragupta Maurya is concerned it either needs to grow or sustain the ratings. One show among the GECs that you would want to be part of… I had launched Balika Vadhu four years back and I feel it’s the best fiction show till date. Apart from that Maryada on Star Plus has a fantastic story line. Any more surprises for the audience? Yes. We are planning a couple of events between Christmas and New Year which will be an icing on the cake.