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.”