MUMBAI: Recently, Star Plus announced that it will be extending its weekday programming till Saturday.

The team at Life OK, the second GEC from the Star Network, seems to be following suit. The channel plans to increase the telecast time of two of its popular fiction shows - Gustakh Dil and Tumhari Paakhi – to one hour. The move comes after the channel’s decision to pull the curtains down on Nautanki Films’ Do Dil Ek Jaan on 24 January.

The producer of the show, Saurabh Tewari confirmed the news to indiantelevision.com and said: “May be, the characters of the show did not click with the audiences and it resulted in poor TVTs and thus we had no option but to pull the curtains down.”

However, the two shows that will fill the void have been doing really well and thus they will now air for an hour each. Gustakh Dil which airs at 7.30 pm will now be telecast from 7-8 pm; and Tumhari Paakhi which currently airs at 9.30 pm, will be telecast from 9-10 pm from 27 January onwards.

The two shows have registered 1,930 and 2,130 TVTs respectively in the Week 3 of TAM TV ratings.

However, when we contacted the producers of the two shows, they were unavailable to comment.

But a source from the channel reveals that the decision has been taken as the channel doesn’t plan to launch any new shows for the next two to three months. Says the source: “The shows are doing really well and I hope the viewers won’t be complaining.”

Even media planners think this to be a good move, not just for the channel but also the advertisers. However, some feel that there are chances of people switching to other programmes during the telecast of the show as they would not like to miss the shows they are used to watching during that time slot.