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What men watch

Spa hunter Arun Thapar

What do men watch on television apart from sports and news? That’s what the folks at NDTV Good Times, the lifestyle channel, asked themselves when they started out a year ago.

It wasn’t an easy question to answer, since television programming with men as its target audience was pretty scarce. “We felt there was definitely a gap there,” comments Shibani Sharma Khanna, channel head at NDTV Good Times.

“So, from the time we launched last September, we’ve had a male skew in mind for our programming.” Accordingly, they began launching primetime television shows for men — specifically the 35-year-old urban, upwardly mobile man — hosted by other men. There were the obvious suspects — Making of the Kingfisher Calendar (but, of course), and gadget shows such as Gadget Guru or The Next Big Thing (which checks out the technology of the future in labs around the world), but there were also the ones that took them by surprise.

For instance, there’s Spectacular Spas for Men, where Arun Thapar sets out to discover the world of glamorous treatments for the new age man. And then there’s Rajat Kapoor’s talk show, the Lounge. Originally conceptualised as a ‘battle of the sexes’ show, it has morphed into one where as many men as women open up about their lives (on air and via e-mail) — about sibling rivalry, children, homosexuality, stress, love … you name it. “The biggest problem for us is ‘stickiness’,” she admits honestly. “There’s no saas-bahu drama to keep men coming back, unlike soaps for women.”

However, what their first year of programming does show is that this is a market that’s begging to be examined more completely — there’s definitely more to television than just sports and news for the urban metrosexual today.

DIVYA KUMAR

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