News Broadcasting
NDTV Prime to debut on Monday with reality show ‘Ticket to Bollywood’
MUMBAI: As part of an image makeover of sorts, NDTV Profit will start broadcasting as a dual channel from Monday, 17 March. During market hours, it will air as itself and thereafter, from 9.00 pm to 11.00 pm, as NDTV Prime, showcasing some innovative shows on a daily basis. In a sense, the aim of NDTV Prime is to woo the urban male audience.
Coming to content, a special show titled Ticket to Bollywood has been produced internally with the help of a clutch of producers. Interestingly, it is a one-hour reality show where NDTV will zero in on to-be actors for a film it will be co-producing at a later stage. Currently, auditions for the show are on. “Ticket to Bollywood is a reality show of a GEC (general entertainment channel) scale. 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm is big-bang Bollywood entertainment that will draw eyeballs and not just NDTV viewers,” says NDTV group CEO Vikram Chandra.
Ticket to Bollywood will run for approximately three months (60 episodes), after which, the slot will be replaced with a new show. A comedy show will follow Ticket to Bollywood at 10:00 pm, after which a film strip will be telecast at 10:30 pm, where a film will be broken into five episodes across the week.
NDTV Profit is betting big on the 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm slot, for which it is busy tying up with producers and production houses for newer ideas. “A lot of producers have come up to us and said that they are delighted with the positioning of the channel. There aren’t many channels for men to watch so the primary constituency of NDTV Profit/Prime is urban men,” says Chandra.
Apart from special content, every hour will begin with news headlines and end with sports headlines. The channel is depending on the rollout of digitisation and the presence of appointment viewing. The difficult part will be to get the audience onto NDTV Prime during peak hours when most TV sets are dominated by GECs. Besides, the channel will have to keep investing money into NDTV Prime to get newer and better shows aboard. NDTV Profit/Prime’s main target will be urban homes with two or more television sets.
A media planner on condition of anonymity says, “What NDTV is trying to do is an image makeover. If that happens, advertisers will come, however it isn’t going to have any major impact on viewers or ratings.”
News Broadcasting
CNN-News18 to air live counting day coverage for five state election results on May 4
The channel is rolling out its biggest election coverage machinery yet for results day on 4th May
NOIDA: The votes have been cast. Now comes the reckoning. CNN-News18 is pulling out all the stops for results day on 4th May, when counting begins across five battleground states — West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry — in what promises to be one of the most closely watched electoral verdicts in recent memory.
The channel’s coverage, titled Battle for the States: The Verdict, kicks off at 7am and runs through the day across linear TV, connected television and YouTube. It is the culmination of CNN-News18’s multi-format editorial initiative, Battle for the States, which has tracked the polls from the beginning under the theme Road to Power.
At the operational heart of the coverage will be the Live Results Hub, the channel’s central command centre built to collate, verify and process real-time data flowing in from reporters stationed at counting centres across constituencies. The hub combines newsroom intelligence, analytics and on-the-ground reporting to deliver what the channel promises will be the fastest and most accurate results coverage in English news.
Leading the on-air charge will be primetime anchors Rahul Shivshankar, Anand Narasimhan, Aman Sharma, Nabila Jamal and Shivani Gupta. They will be joined by a wide panel of commentators including author Chetan Bhagat; GVL Narasimha Rao, senior leader of the BJP; Smita Prakash, editor of ANI; activist Saira Shah Halim; political analyst Sumanth C Raman; Abhijit Iyer Mitra, senior fellow at IPCS; Amitabh Tiwari, founder of VoteVibe; columnist Abhijit Majumdar; Nalin Mehta, managing editor of MoneyControl; political analyst Tehseen Poonawalla; senior journalist Subir Bhaumik; and political analyst Manojit Mandal.
Shivshankar, who serves as editorial affairs director at CNN-News18, set out the stakes plainly. “Counting day is one of the most watched events in the electoral cycle, where speed and credibility are tested in real time,” he said. “Battle for the States: The Verdict is built on that promise, combining ground reporting, sharp analysis and cutting-edge election technology to give viewers the clearest and fastest route to the verdict. On May 4, CNN-News18 will once again be the nation’s most trusted channel to witness democracy in action.”
Smriti Mehra, chief executive of English and Business News at Network18, framed the coverage in broader terms. “Elections are defining national events, and audiences turn to brands they trust in moments that matter,” she said. “CNN-News18 has consistently led from the front in every election coverage, and this special programming reflects the scale of our ambition and editorial strength.”
The channel has form here. It claims to have been India’s most preferred English news destination for election results for the past 20 years, covering everything from the 2024 general elections to the Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar and BMC polls on the back of what it calls an “Always First, Always Right” record. Five states, one day, and a nation waiting for answers. The clock starts at 7am on 4th May.
