Star Plus continues to reign supreme on the TRP charts. The top eight slots across all satellite channels belong to it, a company release states, quoting the latest AC Nielsen TAM ratings for the week ending 27 May.

Looking at the TAM ratings as a whole, Star Plus has reached an all time high with 37 programmes in the top 50. Star Plus‘ 24-hour share is 9.9 per cent - the highest ever, the release states.

And it is Star Plus‘ two superhit soaps, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki which have carved out the top eight positions. Positions 1 to 4 have been taken by Kyunki... with the Thursday 24 May episode being the highest with a 14.7 per cent viewership. For Kahaani... the Tuesday 22 May episode had the highest viewership coming in at 5 with a 10.9 TRP rating. Both series air four days a week Monday through to Thursday.

So overbearing is the soap saga that this genre of programmes cater for 10 of the top 11 programmes on the list. The only relief (for some of us at least) being Sony Entertainment Television‘s dance-based show Boogie-Woogie at 10 with a 5.5 TRP rating. At 9 is Sony‘s Heena (6.2) while 11 is taken by Zee TV‘s Koshish Ek Aashaa (5.4).

The Amitabh Bachchan hosted gameshow Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), which now airs thrice weekdays, has not yet slipped completely off the top 10 reckoning. Numbers 12, 13 and 14 belong to it. Interestingly, KBC Junior, which initially was even more popular than the regular KBC, has slipped to 22 on the charts.

Star Plus‘ shares for 12:30 PM to 2:59 PM (afternoon band) jumped to 32 per cent. The programmes doing well in the afternoon are Shagun (3.4) and Sanskruti (3.2), among others. Sonpari, produced by Neena Gupta, is also among the top 20 programmes with a TVR of 4.5, the release adds.

The data is culled from surveys done in the nine major cities - Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kanpur and Mumbai. The data falls under 4+, ABC category for all cable and satellite homes, covering a population of 20,071,000.

InHouse Productions - better known for its big budget large format shows - will be getting down to producing more of the regular bread and butter serials and soaps, Uday Sinhwala, recently appointed chief operating officer (COO), says.

Sinhwala joined the Sudhesh ‘Mani‘ Iyer-promoted InHouse three weeks ago from Nimbus Communications. Sinhwala comes to InHouse after more than seven years of working with Nimbus promoter Harish Thawani in various capacities, the last being as COO.

"Yes InHouse is very much into lavishly mounted big budget shows but we need to expand the genres of programming that we cover. I will be paying more attention now to family serials and such," Sinhwala says. (Another entrant to the burgeoning ranks of the soap producers?).

"We will be targeting more channels with a deeper focus on TV and ad films so that we become a well rounded and complete production house," Sinhwala says.

Well known shows that InHouse has produced are Sony Entertainment Television‘s gameshow Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke and talk show Movers and Shakers. Inhouse also produces serials for Marathi language channel Alpha Marathi, among others.

A new broom - on most occasions - sweeps clean in most corporations. And Discovery Communications CEO Deepak Shourie believes in this in toto. He has started cleaning up the management within his charge. He has reportedly signed on old hire Rahul Johri, who was earlier with him at Zee News, as his marketing director. Johri was apparently with Shourie even in his days at Outlook.

It is Johri‘s hiring which has led to rumours that marketing director and advertising media whiz Ambika Srivastava has put in her papers. While Srivastava - God bless her - has been denying it to all and sundry, the industry buzz insists that she is just staying out her term at the company. Industry sources point out that she is likely to pitch for the Top Job in mindshare or hitch on to an NGO.

There is also talk that at least two other top executives are planning an early exit from the channel.

Johri‘s last employment was with tehelka.com as vice-president (sales and marketing). Apparently, Shourie is slated to bring many more changes within Discovery. And this has led to some discontent within a company, which has had little of that under the leadership of its former captain Kiran Karnik.