NEW DELHI: The National Geographic Channel (NGC) has emerged as the top infotainment channel largely because of digitisation in the three metros of Mumbaim Delhi and Kolkata, according to a senior NGC official.

FOX International Channels Vice-President of Marketing and Communication Debarpita Banerjee told indiantelevision.com that the channel was now in a comfortable position with regard to both subscriptions and advertisement revenue. She noted that NGC had achieved break even in India several years earlier.

She said that NGC telecasts 25 to 30 hours of Indian programming every week and that the Facebook page of National Geographic had over one million fans.

Banerjee was speaking on the sidelines of the announcement of a new show ?MyEndeavouralterrain?, a new adventure series launched in collaboration with Ford India.

The show will feature five prominent personalities - author Chetan Bhagat, boxer Vijendra Singh, filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor, and actors Gul Panag and Rajeev Khandelwal - driving to their favourite destinations on Ford Endeavour cars and the experiences they encounter en route.

The five will embark on their journeys in mid-March, and the show was expected to be on air in mid-May in five episodes of one hour each, Banerjee said.

She said the aim of the programme was to create new content and explore new regions in India.

While Chetan Bhagat will be traveling from Ahmedabad to Junagarh to meet India?s own tribe which owes its origins to Africa, Vijendra Singh will travel to Rajasthan which he said he had never visited till the Indo-Pak border post. Gul Panag will drive from Goa to Hampi via Karwar as she had always wanted to go to Karnataka.

Nagesh Kukunoor, who will be going from Mannar to Coorg, said all his films were urban and he wanted to explore the rural countryside for his next road film which he had been planning for long. He also said he wanted to complete an unfinished road trip he had been making in 1995 but which he had abandoned mid-way on the same route.

Khandelwal said he would drive from Dibrugarh in Assam to Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh, and recounted an adventure he had undertaken with his brother and some army jawans some years earlier by coming down the Brahmaputra in tyre boats.

Ford India Marketing Sales Executive Director Vinay Piparsania said the idea was also to show how these celebrities would handle the large SUV cars.