MUMBAI: If there is a form of content that will grow in a big way this year it is English channels commissioning local production houses for content. Looking to take advantage of this is Miditech.

The production house is looking to do a host of shows in the lifestyle arena. Speaking to Indiantelevision.com on this Miditech CEO Nikhil Alva says, "We are looking to enter the lifestyle arena in the English genre. We are talking to Zee Trendz, Zoom and other channels for shows. We are looking to do shows on fashion, travel etc. This is an arena that I feel will experience a boom."

Miditech has also done a series of five one hour documentaries for National Geographic Channel (NGC). These will be submitted next week and should go on air from April. They deal with an admirable range of subjects. One of these is tentatively titled Flight IC814. This recreates the fateful hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar in 2000. Alva says that some passengers and crew from the flight recall their harrowing experience which makes it authentic.

Closer home Miditech has also done a special on the Mumbai floods. This looks at the havoc wrought on the city last July and how the infrastructure crumbled.

Another documentary looks at the earthquake phenomenon. This was shot in the US and China. It looks at the work that scientists are doing in developing prediction models.

Chasing Cyclones is a tentative name for another documentary. Alva adds that as is the case with any NGC show a lot of research went into each documentary. It took two years to make some of the shows. A lot of effort has gone into understanding the different situations and the dynamics of each situation.