Indiantelevision.com Team

(31 July 2010 10:20 pm)

MUMBAI: With Discovery Travel and Living ready to adorn its new name TLC from 1 September, Discovery plans to begin marketing the much hipper, trendier and cooler channel mid-August onwards.

The marketing activities will cover print, radio, television, outdoor and online. The aim is twofold. One is to familiarise viewers with the new look and feel of the new channel and the other is to showcase the content and new shows. Also, promos will be cut featuring faces like Vir Sanghvi.

Discovery India senior VP, GM Rahul Johri says that the aim of TLC is to enlarge the brand promise of Discovery Travel and Living.

"We want to enhance the viewers experience. There will be new genres like adventure. There will also be family shows in the afternoon. The new channel will go deeper into travel, food and lifestyle. The aim of TLC is to take the lifestyle genre to the next level. Our aim is to make TLC the number one English entertainment channel in the country among the affluent audiences. The sooner we do this the better. A key learning from operating Discovery Travel and Living for six years has been that if you offer quality content to a targeted audience it will work. We have always been on brand and have never compromised."

The programming line up on TLC, with over 150 hours of content, includes 15 new shows, six new hosts and 11 new seasons and genres such as extreme adventure, family and makeovers.

The premiere series will include Sea Nation, Everyday Exotic, Get Out, Glutton For Punishment. new seasons of shows like World Cafe: Middle East, Globe Trekker and Living With a Superstar: Shah Rukh Khan.There will also be new lifestyle content including Shimmy and Exxtreme Sommer.

Johri adds that Vir Sanghvi will return with a new season of Asian Diary while in an episode of Ian Wright's show Invite Ian, Arshad Warsi will be featured.

The fact that new channels like Discovery Turbo and Discovery Science have launched means that there is segmentation which allows for more effective targeting. It is expected that marketing activities for Discovery Turbo and Discovery Science will start around 2 October, 2010. Johri claims that they are already available in 15 million homes.