By Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

Shilpa Shetty is doing it for UK hit series Big Brother; Shah Rukh Khan is doing it with KBC-3 and Sunil Shetty is going to do it with a new series on health that would be an onscreen reality show for weight reduction. Television, which just an year ago was not touched with the barged pole by the established stars of the film industry, and the television stars aspired to graduate to it by using there popularity through the TV serials has now found its acceptability amongst the stars of the yore. It is either being used as a prop to give a boost to the sagging career to earn more money or to prove to the world that television is also going to accept these stars with the same warmth that they have been able to generate for themselves through the films.

The advent of television had provided a much needed shot in the arm majorly to the one film wonders or those stars that were on the downhill in terms of their age and could not survive the onslaught of the box office. It was however through the success of KBC series, which propelled the career of AB which had gone down in the dumps to new dizzying heights that started the stars to give a second thought to acting in television as well. Television has gone into the consolidation mode and it is what has been the major factor propelling the stars to have a relook into it.

The biggest advantage that a television has is that the stars can directly enter into the drawing rooms and the bedrooms of the audience and the affinity that is developed in this manner cannot be developed in the anonymity of a silver screen, however large the screen may be as there are score of other viewers trying to weave their dream through the stars on the screen. But the bedroom or the drawing room is a personalized space, and it is the personalized space that is now sought to be conquered as the fan following that is developed through this channel has an unflinching loyalty that does not change from a Friday to another Friday but has a minimum run of about two months. Who could have thought that a Smriti Irani could become such a figure to stand in election, but for the advent of this television?

The reverse migration to television that is being experienced all over the world is a trend that provides the actors to experiment to a large extent which does not seem to be an option in general with the movies, slotted as one is in a category whose shackles to break is a major daunting task. It had to happen and happen it did in the year 2006 with a big bang, as this was the year during which the advertisements backed the major serials to the hilt manifest from the 10 seconds slot advertisements going in for more than a lakh of rupees. In the end it has boiled down to plain economics and it has started doing that and during the year 2007 it is going to throw up some interesting trends and formulations. HBO after all produces films that are exclusively premiered on the television and are never released in the cinema halls, may be the same could follow up here as well, once the stars like Shah Rukh, Sunil and Shilpa turn there attention to the television, and it is the average viewer who is going to be the winner.