This evening, the NDTV-Hindu crew came home to do a shoot for their tech show titled ‘Byte it’. It’s the soon-to-be-launched TV channel in which NDTV has a 51% stake and The Hindu holds the rest 49%. It was originally named Metronation Chennai but I think its new name ‘NDTV Hindu’ is far better as it draws upon the strength of two well entrenched brand names. I’m told it will be a Chennai centric channel with content being on the lines of NDTV GoodTimes, Profit & News combined.
We fixed the interview time at 4PM but I came in 45 minutes late, making the crew wait. Got stuck in the previous training and as luck would have it, traffic had to get real bad. After profuse apologies and locking away my pesky kids inside the room, we began the shoot.
One of the episodes was on writing for the web with an intention of making money and the other one was on the browser shoot-out with focus on Google Chrome. We nailed it after a few retakes.
Few interesting observations. Those focus lights were absolutely blinding. The first few seconds were actually painful and my eyes began to well up. It took a while before I could get used to the sheer brightness. If that wasn’t enough, the lights were producing a lot of heat and worse, the fans had to be switched off to cut down on ambient noise. I began to sweat almost instantly and had to wipe the sweat every few minutes.
TU Dinesh is the host and the producer of the show and it was heartening to see him again. Just a few years ago, I first met him as a student when I went to guest lecture at the Madras Christian College. He stood out from the crowd then with his enthusiasm. From a student to a trainee at Indian Interacts to his current role at NDTV-Hindu, that’s quite an appreciable climb.
I’m told that the new Channel is aiming for a pre-Diwali release. Will get to know the date and time of this episode’s telecast as we get closer towards the launch.
And oh, the next time, I should clean up my book shelf. Didn’t realize it was this messy.
