It’s no laughing matter Content, poaching and Comedy Circus

The company that boasts of having produced successful shows like Indian Idol 1, Yeh Meri Life Hai and Comedy Circus is now ready with the second season of Comedy Circus. Chairman and CEO Sanjiv Sharma and Executive Managing Director Vipul Shah of Optimystix are the driving force of the production house. As the new season hits airtime on 26th April, Tellychakkar caught up with the duo for a ring side view of Comedy Circus 2. Excerpts from a t?te-?-t?te. Comedy Circus always picks talent from The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. Why don’t you scout talent yourself? Well, I’m not so sure what the mix here is. There must be just a couple of Laughter guys who are there in this season. There are seven stand-up artists who are all by-products of Laughter Challenge. Well, that may be true but we have projected these artists in an all together different manner. Our format is vastly different to theirs. The humour too differs as these artists perform in tandem with an actor rather than stand-alone acts. There’s never any repetition of content. Besides, the comedians evaluate them here through two fronts – (a) on their chemistry with the actor and (b) how well they succeed in educating the actor. It’s an all together different environment here. Your format, where the other participants get to eliminate one pair was criticised by even the former participants. There’s every possibility that the best pair can get ousted. A format is like a rule of any game which needs to be adhered to every time. Ideally, you want the best pair to win but even if that doesn’t happen, you always get appreciated for your efforts. In Comedy Circus, we have created a flavour of stand-up and reality show. Meddling with the format would imply robbing the show of its reality flavour. Duets are all about putting each other down. Isn’t this monotonous and childish? What you’ve seen today will not be televised. We have a strong content team which emphasises on churning out new content week after week and I can assure you that once the show commences you won’t see repeats of such acts. Comedy shows have a short shelf life. What new will Comedy Circus 2 have for viewers? Saturation does come in but what works in our favour is the show’s format. Out here, a viewer gets to see a new act in every episode. It’s not so much season to season. A format is like a structural pillar of every show. There can be cosmetic changes to a format but altering it completely every season simply doesn’t make sense. Why is it that Johnny Lever wasn’t retained for the second season? I’m not aware of the reasons for it you’ll have to speak to Vipul regarding this. (Vipul begins the conversation by answering the above question) We don’t have Johnny Lever but we thought of having a judge who will provide more variety. Are you trying to say that Johnny Lever doesn’t provide that? No, I didn’t say that. We’ll have a rotating third judge every week. You’ll see Shekhar Suman or Kiron Kher in the coming weeks. Shekhar Suman has not been retained for TGILC 4. With him coming on Comedy Circus is he trying to even scores with TGILC ? No, that’s wrong to say that. It was we who requested him to make an appearance and he was more than happy to oblige. TGILC’s Kapil Sharma and Chandan Prabhakar were supposed to do your show but they reportedly backed out owing to the harsh judging in Ustaadon Ka Ustaad. Kapil and Chandan had signed for us and they backed out at the last moment. However, citing poor judging in Ustaadon…as a reason to opt out of our show is no excuse at all. Artists usually make such excuses when they have offers from other production houses. Backing out the way they did carries its legal implication. Fortunately, we were able to find overnight replacements. So, are you contemplating any legal action against them? We will have to discuss this with our legal department and then decide on the future course of action. Finally, why have you chosen to launch your show during the Indian Premier League? Don’t you think you’ll lose your viewers to cricket? IPL or not, the show must go on. Besides, it’s just not us but everyone is going to be hit by IPL. During this period, everyone is likely to be judged on a lower parameter.