Hotstar has announced the release date for On Air with AIB season 3 in a new trailer: it’s out September 24. The news comedy show is hosted by the All India Bakchod sketch quartet of Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Rohan Joshi, and Ashish Shakya. As before, the show will release new episodes every week, with "a host of topical issues covered on Mondays, followed by a deep dive into a particular topic on Wednesdays, while Fridays will see an ad hoc conversation, Off-Script" involving AIB and a special guest.
That's a slight tweak to what On Air with AIB did in season 2. After trying out a dual-language approach with the first season in 2015 – Bhat and Khamba in Hindi, and Joshi and Shakya in English – where two episodes tackling the same topics were released each week for a total of 20 episodes, the show moved to a new format with its second season in 2017, releasing three episodes a week. Season 2 had 40 episodes in total.
While one main episode, usually about 20 minutes in length and released every Monday, discussed topical news and dove into issues it deemed prevalent (the segment was called ‘Deep Dive’), a second shorter episode – dubbed ‘Can You Not’, 5-8 minutes in length and released every Wednesday – poked fun at things that seem ridiculous such as political acronyms and pseudoscience. The latter has been dropped, it seems, while the former has been split into two to take the Wednesday slot.
The third weekly episode, known as ‘Off Script’ and running over 30 minutes, was released every Friday. It took a more talk show-based approach where AIB invited friends and colleagues to chat about topical non-news items, such as school examinations, summer breaks and internships. And that seems to be continuing with On Air with AIB season 3.
On Air with AIB is one of the few Hotstar Originals in addition to the Sarabhai vs Sarabhai revival, the IPL sports talk show The Fanatics, the stage-plays series CinePlay, romance drama Tanhaiyan, and the Hindi comedy As I’m Suffering From Pyaar, which had Tamil (Kadhal) and Telugu (Prema) counterparts as well. For the most part, the service has focused on live sports and licensing international content from HBO, Showtime and others.
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