Antakshri, the successful game and entertainment show from Zee TV, completes its 400th episode next week and Zee Telefilms is using the occasion in its earthquake relief efforts. This is apart from the fact that the network has also adopted one village for rehabilitation.

‘Antakshari‘ which almost immediately become a runaway success after Zee first introduced it in September 1993, has been running for more than seven years and is one of the channel‘s most popular programmes and has enjoyed consistently high ratings.

The network has decided to arrange special shows where celebrities will participate as contestants and the award money will go towards quake relief. The shoot will take place from Saturday 17 February to 23 February at Water Kingdom at Gorai.

A total of 14 episodes will be shot with celebrities from different fields like news readers, models, pop singers, vintage artists, etc. The list of news readers include names like Shammi Narang, Nidhi Kulpathi, MK Jha, Poonam Sharma, Sadhana Shrivastava, Shahidi and Geetika. The amount that participants win will be handed over to a victim‘s family after the show, who will be a special guest for that event.

Zee Network has already adopted ‘Samakhyali‘ village in Gujarat for rehabilitation. "The other nitty-gritty‘s are in the process of finalisation, and soon we will come out with a proper plan," says a Zee executive.

Looks like the "butts and cleavage" on Fashion Television will be around a while longer.

For how long remains to be seen because the parliamentary panel led by information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj decided on Thursday to convey to the FTV bosses that they drop some of their "objectionable" programmes.

Essentially that their should be less of clothes dropping and more of dressing up in line with "Indian cultural ethos", an all-embracingly vague term if there ever was one.

In other words the guys at FTV will have to tear their hair out finding ways on how to keep the clothes on. A bit of self-censorship should make the channel pass muster seems to be the general sentiment among the committee members.

Swaraj is expected to convey the panel‘s decision to FTV Director Michael Adam when he calls on her in New Delhi next week.

Two days after Sony Entertainment Television put out positive figures on the television viewer ratings (TVRs) of its gameshow Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke, there‘s a mysterious email out debunking it all.

The mail has been sent out by "a friendly ghost" (not your regular Casper type though) and asks the question "kiska kya phadaa?" (impossible to translate but the general drift could be "who‘s punctured who?)

Looking at the TAM data released from an all-India perspective, the figures show a weighted average TVR of 6.8 points for five episodes, much lower than the 11 point TVR which Sony had put out. The key difference here is that south side figures pull down JCPK‘s TVRs like crazy. Basically because JCPK has virtually zero takers in the south.

Asked for his reaction, Sony CEO Kunal Dasgupta was dismissive. "It is obvious that the figures we put out would be based on results coming in from the north. Those in the know know what the truth is," Dasgupta said. (It is acknowledged that JCPK targets Hindi speaking audiences).

Sony programming head Rekha Nigam echoed Dasgupta in saying that TVR from the north were what they were interested in. "I try to put all these things out of my mind and get on with work," Nigam said.

Looks like the channel wars are heating up in right earnest and we can expect ever more creative expressions of it.