MUMBAI: Come 10 August and the popular Balaji Telefilms’ Jodha Akbar, which ran for a period of two years on Zee TV will make way for the new show Tashan-E-Ishq.

Armed with a modern concept of love, the show has a fresh look with three main leads.

The new show will be telecast from Monday to Friday at 8 pm and will be competing with other shows like Tu Mera Hero on Star Plus, Sankatmochan Mahabali Hanuman on Sony, Ek Nayi Ummed: Roshni on Life OK and Bhagyalakshmi on &TV.  

Zee TV business head Pradeep Hejmadi said, “Before finalizing the concept, we went through a lot of research and carried out consumer surveys. It was only after a round of pilot testing that we finalised the story and the characters.”

With a Punjabi backdrop, it took over a year to finalize the show’s look and feel. The story revolves around two Punjabi industrialist families and their rivalries but with a twist of love by the youngsters of both the families.

While both Jodha Akbar and Tashan-E-Ishq have a backdrop of love, Hejmadi stressed on the fact that both stories were different. “Tashan-E-Ishq is not meant to compete with Jodha Akbar. It was a love story and while Tashan-E-Ishq is also a love story, the message is very different,” he said.  

Speaking on how the channel plans to get viewer traction on its show, Hejmadi said, “Every channel has its own strategy to groom its show or evaluate shows for slots before launching. For us, it’s critical to understand the texture of the audience through the day and based on that we envisage on how we want to migrate the audience on our channel.”

With broadcasters upping their digital game, most of their programming content is now also available on their respective over-the-top (OTT) platforms. And Zee TV is not an exception. The channel has put out all of its content on its OTT platform Ditto TV. What’s more, Zee is using Ditto TV for consumer research and to understand what they like. Hejmadi said, “Digitization is happening since a long time in India and we are just using the digital platform to understand the market. However, in terms of creating content, it’s too early to do that for the digital platform.”

Speaking on advertisers’ response to the new show, Hejmadi said, “Advertisers have liked it. However, we have largely focussed on consumers with our shows. The advertiser only gauges on the show’s content.”

Marketing plays a vital role for its show to be successful and while Tashan-E-Ishq has a tinge of Punjabi flavour, it has been marketed pan India. With a target group of 25 - 50 years, Zee is going conservative by marketing the series primarily on the television medium. “We are concentrating more on to television rather than outdoor or digital marketing because our target audience is on television. Secondly, we will also look at a burst on the print media.”