The 13-episode animated series will be flagged off on May 8, 1999 at 7.30 pm. Says Raghav Bahl, managing director, Eighteen Entertainment India Ltd (TV-18), CNBC Asia's franchisee in India: ``Dilbert is already quite popular among corporate readers in India. On TV it'll be all the more popular.''

The introduction of Dilbert --``a poster boy for the corporately disenfeanchised'' -- into the programming is in keeping with CNBC's strategy to enhance the India-centric content on working days and to provide more leisure viewing on weekends.

Recently CNBC added India Manager 2000 to its portfolio. Says Bahl, ``Since CNBC Asia is focussed at business viewers, Dilbert is a natural fit for leisure viewing. We're trying to have rich leisure component onweekends.''

Sponsored by Philip's regional office in Singapore, the syndicated series on Dilbert -- the icon of New Age management -- will focus on Scott Adams' core competence: cocking a snook at the chaos, confusion, mayhem, and misadventures at the workplace. CNBC Asia's logic: after coping with a tough week, managers can unwind by watching episodes on how the luckless Dilbert heroically tackles daily corporate challenges such as: prototype development, product testing, labour unrest, employee exploitation, corporate take-overs, staff downsizing, and the Y2K problem.

For those who came in late: launched in 1989, Dilbert is a cartoon computer worker drawn by Scott Adams and featured daily in 1,900 newspapers around the world. For the animated tele-series Adams joined hands with Emmy Award winner Larry Charles.

Supporting Dilbert of course, will be the usual cast of bullys and bunglers: Dogbert, The Boss, Catbert, Ratbert, Dilbert's colleagues Wally and Alice, the three dinosaurs who live in Dilbert'shouse Bob, Dawn andRex; and of course the mud-wallowing Elbonians.

In The Prototype, for example -- Dilbert, Alice and Wally find out that the prototype they are working on is competing against the ruthless Lena, and the losers will be transferred to dreaded Albany. It's a story of corporate lechery, office seduction, betrayal, impotency and how it never works out the way we plan. In other words, a day's work.