Television viewing has always been about appointment viewing - catch up with your favourite shows on a particular day at a particular time.
While airing fiction shows from Monday to Friday and comedy and movies over weekends has been somewhat the norm, a clutch of channels down South, particularly in Karnataka, has taken a shine to fiction shows spilling over to Saturdays as well.

Asianet Suvarna, Star's GEC channel in Karnataka, took this route about six months ago when it started airing fiction shows for six days a week.
Star's Malayalam GEC Asianet followed suit with a few prime-time fiction shows extended to Saturday.
Recently, Sun TV, the Tamil GEC from the dominant Sun Network, joined the fray with its prime-time fiction shows replacing a movie and a game slot on Saturday.

Not to be left behind, Sun Network's Malayalam GEC Surya TV added Saturday to the telecast of the crime thriller Satyameva Jayate and its Kannada GEC Udaya TV also traversed the same path.
So, what prompted these GECs to include Saturdays in their fiction line-up? Apparently, the channels believe airing soaps on a Saturday is more profitable as compared to airing movies, which they used to earlier. "Producing a half-an- hour fiction serial would mean investing about Rs 70,000 to Rs 80,000 whereas acquiring a movie would mean spending at least Rs 2-5 crore depending on the movie," says Asianet Suvarna business head Anup Chandrashekaran.

Another factor is that while Tamil Nadu is probably and arguably the best movie market in the south, the Karnataka film industry isn't prospering too much, according to many channel executives. Hence, neither advertisers nor the revenue from Kannada movies is consistent as compared to that from shows. Again, movie repeats depend on the premiere performance. A good movie can fetch anywhere between Rs 40 lakh to Rs 60 lakh as ad revenues from its first telecast. This means that for recovery it has to be telecast several times but repeats don't get the same value.

It also states that the number of films certified from Karnataka has dropped from 162 in 2008 to 128 in 2012. Whereas, the number of films certified from Tamil Nadu has grown from 175 to 262 in the same time span.

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