The History Channel hopes to catch them young

The History Channel is looking for teen viewers. It's hoping to attract enough eyeballs from this age-group for its upcoming show 'Lost and Found'. The programme will track down some rare and truly precious artefacts such as the first Zippo lighter and the first pair of Levi's jeans. Charlie Chaplin's Tramp shoes will also be a part of these priceless objects. The show will be launched in February and will be aired from Monday to Friday at 8 pm.

Charath Narsimhan, vice president, marketing, The History channel says, “A typical viewer of The History Channel is a male in the age-group of 25-plus. But this genre of programmes will also help us increase our viewership in the younger age-group of 15-plus males category.”

The channel, in the recent past, has been successful in inviting a fare amount of young males with the show 'History Rocks' based on legends of the music world. The show was one of the top-scoring shows for the channel with a TVR of 0.16 (TAM, C&S, five metros). Another show catering to the younger males is 'Boys Toys', which managed a TVR of 0.18 between November 7 to December 5, 2004.

To promote the show History Rocks, the channel had tied up with radio stations to play numbers sung by the famous musical legends, featured in the TV show.

In fact, these shows has also helped the channel to broaden its advertisers' spectrum and it has been successful in bring in brands such as Killer Jeans on board apart from the usual advertisers such as banks, financial institutions, high-end consumer durables or the automobile brands.

Narsimhan says, “It was really interesting to see brands such as Killer jeans coming on board. Not only it is an apparel product, it also caters to young males.”

Narismhan says, the channel will be launching a couple of new shows every month. Besides 'Lost and Found', the channel has lined up shows such as 'In the Line of Fire' and 'Tactical to Practical' for February and March.

While 'In the Line of Fire' is an interactive show on war history, where viewers can judge how a commandant's decision changed the course of history. 'Tactical to Practical', on the other hand, is a show which digs out interesting facts such as how Internet was first conceived for the US army – only to be used by the whole world later.

Since its launch, the channel's main focus has been on the distribution front. Narsimhan claims, “Today, we reach out to 24 million C&S homes, which is 70 per cent of the total pie.”

“In 2005, our focus would be advertising and programming apart from further strengthening our distribution network,” he adds.

Talking about the Indianisation of content, Narismhan says. “Our motto has been to provide international content in a localised format. But we have also realised from our past experience that Indianised content is a key to success. So at present, we are on the look-out for some international documentaries made on India.”

© 2005 agencyfaqs!