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Latha Venkatraman

There is no dearth of talk shows on television... Bollywood and cricket rule here too.

Just the other day a journalist friend said if she ever were to stray into TV journalism she would like to host a show on the lines of BBC World's Hardtalk. She was voicing a desire that many journalists nurture at the start of their career, print or television.

Mid-April, the show that has earned a reputation for being hard-hitting, and occasionally biased, got a new presenter, Stephen Sackur, who replaced Tim Sebastian.

Sackur started his innings with an interview of Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, Secretary General, NATO. Sackur has 15 years' experience as BBC's Foreign Correspondent and has interviewed US Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But Hardtalk may never feel the same without Tim Sebastian.

There is no dearth of talk shows on TV that are hosted by names like Vir Sanghvi, Pooja Bedi, Manish Malhotra, Karan Johar, Ronnie Screwvala, Lola Kutty and Simi Garewal.

But how interesting are the shows? The TRPs might provide an answer. Many celebrities make it to these shows, with the most popular being Bollywood stars and cricketers.

One has seen Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan once too often on interviews, but where is Aamir Khan? Will he appear on Karan Johar's show when it returns next season? "Karan Johar can't go through an interview without the presence of Shah Rukh Khan or the mention of his name," says a viewer. The show started well but rapidly deteriorated into a self-appreciating insiders' programme. The season's wrap-up show was possibly its worst.

These days, Vir Sanghvi looks bored interviewing his guests. His expression seems to say, `What am I doing here?' Lola Kutty, on the other hand, seems too earnest. While Karan Johar is adept at embarrassing guests on his Koffee with Karan, Sanjeev, the chat show host on Kumars at No 42, is often embarrassed by the antics of his family members. Meera Syal, playing the grandmother, is without doubt the most appealing character on the show.

The Indian version of the show, Batliwala House No 43, on Sony TV however does not match up to the English original.

Not all comedy shows can bring on the intended laughter. Cy vs Cy, hosted by Cyrus Broacha and Cyrus Sahukar on MTV, is not one bit funny as the hosts would like us to believe. The `Simi Girebal Show', a take-off on Simi Garewal's show, was quite an attempt at comedy but yielded no laughter.

A lifestyle channel

Discovery Travel and Living, dubbed India's first international lifestyle channel andtargeted at upper-class audiences, has successfully garnered advertisements.

"The channel has become a destination for upscale advertising brands. Advertisers see value in the channel's favourable word-of-mouth reviews," says a channel official. Brands on the channel include Maruti Suzuki, LG, ICICI Prudential, Nokia, ING Vysya Bank, Hyundai, Motorola, GM, De Beers, Samsung, Reliance Infocomm, Philips and Visa.

The interesting programming blends lifestyle nuggets with exotic and gourmet holidays. There's some roughing out involved too — a recent show took viewers across the Sahara Desert, travelling through Chad. It was amazing to watch the presenter travel through miles of stark emptiness, enduring extremely difficult weather conditions.

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