CHENNAI: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is putting together call aggregation infrastructure that can handle up to one million calls an hour for the second and final season of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) that will kick off when the phone lines open on June 6.

"June 6 will be a big day for Indian telephony," says Ajay Vidyasagar, Senior vice-president, Marketing and Communication, STAR India, in an exclusive interview to The Hindu during a visit to the city.

A report prepared by BSNL recorded that the first season of KBC yielded nine crore calls. "The report showed that for every call we got, 20 people could not get through.

So 180 crore people tried and couldn't get through," Mr. Vidyasagar says. "Last time, there was a one hour discussion in Parliament if KBC was a sham and if STAR was hoodwinking the public, because a lot of people just couldn't get through," he adds.

Encouraged by the response last season, BSNL has tied up with the show as the official landline partner for the event.

"The Union Minister was very enthusiastic about this," Mr. Vidyasagar says.

``About 20 per cent of the calls we got last season were from Tamil Nadu and Kerala. We are very keen about participation from Tamil Nadu because this State takes to general knowledge and quizzing really well. We believe that there is a certain level of intellect that resides in the State."

This time around, people need not dial numbers to get the questions to participate in the show. The questions will be flashed on the TV screen during prime time programmes on STAR Plus.

The first episode of the limited edition of 85 episodes of KBC will go on air on August 5.

"The last episode will be on air on February 17, 2006.

Mr. Bachchan is the busiest actor in Bollywood and it is too costly and time consuming for us to do it," Mr. Vidyasagar says.

"In 2000, when we went on air with KBC, there were only 25 million homes and only 30 million landlines to make calls from. Now, we have over 52 million cable and satellite homes. So one out of two homes have only heard of KBC or haven't really seen too much of KBC. But now, we have 45 million phone lines and 49 million mobiles to send us messages.

It is just a local call from the landline this time around and viewers can play along live during the show via SMS.

Last time, KBC redefined primetime viewing on weekdays. This time KBC2 will redefine viewing on weekends," he says.

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