Funnyman’s show gets two-month extension as superstar Khan’s packed diary delays shoot of ‘replacement’ programme, Dus Ka Dum
Bharati Dubey (MID-DAY; May 29, 2017)

A mid-flight fracas with co-act Sunil Grover in March had seemingly tolled the death knell for Kapil Sharma’s skit-cum-chat show. Along with Sunil aka Rinku Bhabhi, three other artistes — Ali Asgar ( Nani), Chandan Prabhakar (Chandu) and Sugandha Mishra (Teacher) — also quit the show, forcing Kapil to introduce a host of new comics.

TRPs plummeted swiftly and in the first week of April, the channel gave him a month’s notice to get his act together. Now, we hear, Kapil has got a two-month extension with ‘replacement’ show Dus Ka Dum being postponed, thanks to host Salman Khan’s unavailability.

“Salman has already started shooting for Tiger Zinda Hai, his reunion film with Katrina Kaif. So, the makers of Dus Ka Dum have pushed it to January 2018. That’s how the channel could allow Kapil more time to run his show,” says an insider.

Following the exit of Sunil, arguably the most loved act on the Kapil Sharma Show, the TRPs crashed as the show’s popularity took a huge beating. Kapil roped in veteran stand-up comics Raju Srivastava and Ehsaan Qureshi as replacements apart from new entrants like adult star Monica Castellino and Supriya Shukla from TV show Kum Kum Bhagya. However, the current ratings are far from impressive.

Industry observer Anil Wanvari says, “Last week’s TRPs went up to nearly four million impressions from B3.4 million the week before. At its peak, the show garnered an average six million impressions. The recent Arjun Kapoor-Shraddha Kapoor episode evoked a positive response. We will have to wait and watch for at least a fortnight if the upward trend continues. We can’t write Kapil’s show off just yet.”