Five new soaps and a handful of in-house produced shows. That‘s the first of Zee TV‘s artillery as it starts its offensive against Star Plus and Sony Entertainment. The duo has already stolen quite a lot of advertising ground from it.

They include: Samander, Aanchal Ke Chaon Mei, Gardish, Ankahee, Kaise Kahoon. Kaise Kahoon, the first of the five soaps starts airing on 5 February (Monday to Thursday 3:30 pm), and is produced by Mona Kapoor. Aashique Rahul Roy makes his small screen debut with this soap. (Wonder whether his lover boy image will help attract audiences?)

The story is about two close friends from different communities whose friendship extends to theri families. The families begin to drift apart when a narrow-minded female protagonist comes into the picture. "Effort is taken to blend two communities out of this serial, the happiness, misunderstanding and sorrow that these two families undergo due to the narrow way of thinking of a single female," says Sudha Chandran, one of the leads in the soap.

	Aanchal Ki Chaon Mein commences from 6 February every Tuesday at 9.30 pm and is produced by Rakesh Sarang and Mir Muneer. "The series is the story of a woman torn between the attachment of her family and her own personal life," says Mir Munner the serial writer and co-producer. Slotted for the late night slot are Ankahee (produced by Manish
A still from Samander, one of the five new soaps

Goswami; debuts on 21 February, Wednesdays 9:30 pm) and Gardish (directed by Ravi Rai; 7 February, Wednesdays 10 pm). Ankahee has Govind Namdeo, Vivek Mushran and Iravati Harshe playing the leads . Samander by Rajesh Mishra debuts on 8 February and is to be telecast every Thursday at 10 pm with Kabir Bedi and the versatile Nikki Aneja starring.

And if this is not enough to add to the programming masti, it has lined up Chatpati Chaat - a 15 minute programe consisting of select comedy scenes from Hindi movies (Monday to Friday 10:45 am) and hosted by Bhavna Balsaver.

Will the new programming help Zee TV regain lost turf? For that it is over to King Viewer, who wields that ominous remote in his/her hands.

The numbers are in for "Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke" (JCPK), the gameshow from Sony Entertainment Television hosted by Govinda, and they couldn‘t have been better for the channel.

With weighted average Television Viewer Ratings (TVRs) of 18.1 in the five cities covered by TAM and 17.2 per cent in the cities covered by INTAM, Sony CEO Kunal Dasgupta and his senior team head for a brainstorming session at Sony Pictures Entertainment headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday cool as cucumbers.

Dasgupta admitted that it was unrealistic to expect JCPK to sustain such high viewership over an extended period but said he said the initials were highly encouraging. Queried as to what sort of average TVRs would be satisfactory Dasgupta gave a rather conservative figure of 8.

Results from the survey commissioned by Sony indicate the show enjoyed a weighted channel share of 57.4 per cent in the TAM cities and 45.2 per cent in the INTAM towns.

The cities covered by TAM were Mumbai, New Delhi, Kanpur, rest of UP and Ludhiana. INTAM covered Mumbai, New Delhi and some UP towns. In comparison, Star?s Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) on its debut day on July 3 had notched a TV rating of 14.3 per cent in all cable homes in Mumbai with a peak rating of 19.4 per cent at one time. In Delhi, the average TVR was 10.4 per cent and in Kanpur 18.3 per cent on the first day.

Star Plus? audience share on the first day of KBC was 39.5 per cent, 41.1 per cent and 51.3 per cent in Mumbai, Delhi and Kanpur, respectively.

With an estimated budget of Rs 700 million a year the cost of producing the show is a tad high. Dasgupta, however, remaims unfazed. "We‘re looking for a whole host of spin-off benefits from the show. If JCPK succeeds as we expect it to, it will lift the profile of the whole channel, he said. As to expected revenues from the show, he said they were looking at Rs10 million per episode.

Dasgupta was firm that JCPK would remain in the weekend slot thereby steering clear of any direct confrontation with KBC. "We‘ll carve our own space," he said.

"We are looking to increase our presence over the rest of the week with two new programmes in the pipeline. They will will be telecast on Mondays and Fridays," he said. "Balaji Telefilms‘ ‘Kusum‘ will be one of them but we‘ve not yet finalised screening schedules," he added.

Cartoon Network, a pioneer of kids television in India, has launched its own website CartoonNetworkIndia.com. On this online entertainment site the cartoon enthusiast can tour around the Hanna-Barbara Studio, and read interviews with the world‘s greatest creators of cartoons, watch and get to know how cartoons are made, and even read up about their favourite characters.

The site has a host of exciting, interactive toon games and also has features that enable the enthusiastic surfer to interact with their favourite cartoons: Dexter, Powerpuff Girls and also send e-cards.

According to Ian Diamond, senior vice-president and general manager, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, the off-air efforts are geared towards bringing the Network experience closer to viewers.