BENGALURU: Star Network’s Kannada general entertainment channel (GEC) Suvrana TV is all set to launch a new fiction show titled Pretthi Endarenu. The channel is looking at strengthening its 6.30 pm time band with the new show, which will be aired from Monday to Saturday.
The half an hour show will go on air from 25 May and will replace Ambari, which had a 250 episode run.
Pretthi Endarenu is a story of two young people in love. The couple are childhood friends. The story begins when the male lead Abhishek returns home with a degree from abroad to find Preethi all grown up.
Suvarna TV has roped in film actors Jahnavi Kamath and Shrunga to play the lead roles in the serial. The duo had acted in the Kannada movie Parrari directed by Chaitanya KM, who is also the director of Pretthi Endarenu. Other notable movies by Chaitanya KM include his debut film, a cult classic, Aa Dingalu that won the Filmfare award for best film and best director.
The title track of Pretthi Endarenu was written by Rashtrakavi (National poet) G S Shivardrappa and was composed about 24 years ago by S R Ramakrishnah. Sharath Lohitawasa debuts his singing career with the tile track of the soap.
Suvarna TV business head Anup Chandrsekharan said, “Our viewers have given a wonderful response to the initial promos and we are excited to reach a wider audience during early primetime through Pretthi Endarenu and strengthen our time band.”
“We keep a bank of 10-15 episodes of each program with us. We have enough content now to run Pretthi Endarenu through 250 to 400 episodes and then depending upon the audience response, we could run the show even longer,” added Suvarna TV head of programming Sudheendhra.
“We generally allocate anything from 60 to 120 seconds per half hour for each sponsor, depending upon the nature of the deal we’ve signed,” a source from the channel told Indiantelevision.com.
Suvarna has managed to rope in Wipro’s Santoor brand as the title sponsor and GRS Fantasy Park as the ‘powered by’ sponsor. Each 30 minute episode will have a runtime of 23 minutes plus six minutes of ad time and one minute of promos.
