A thousand Runs

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Anushree Bhattacharyya: Dec 04 2012, 20:58 IST

to the 1000-episode club. That was the time when the viewer followed her serial religiously, everything that happened in a serial made a difference in the life of a viewer and fashion trends were dictated by what the protagonists in these serials wore. But today when audience fragmentation is the norm and attention spans are short, it's no mean feat to keep television viewers coming back to see the same show five days a week for four long years. In the Hindi general entertainment space it's all the more tougher given the bloodbath this genre has seen in recent years– three channels (9X, Real, and Imagine) have seen the axe, peak television rating points (TRP) have plunged to 4 from a high of 14, even as a host of channels have come up across genres targeting the same audience.

The Plot

Much credit goes to the storyline of these long-running serials. “The life line of a serial depends on the scope of narrative offered by the story,” said Raj Nayak, CEO of Colors. In 2008 when Viacom18 launched its Hindi general entertainment channel Colors, Balika Vadhu was launched as its flagship show on the 8 pm time band. The show primarily dealt with the child marriage and therefore followed the lives of the two protagonists Jagya and Anandi who get married as children. The channel at that time had launched another show Uttaran which revolved around the friendship between a rich girl and a poor girl. While Balika Vadhu was aired on

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