By: Simran Mody, India Correspondent

Perhaps some think he just does not have the charisma of his father, but that is not stopping Abhishek Bachchan from countering his critics and saying hosting a television show is much more enjoyable than acting.

With a few news reports claiming Abhishek’s anchoring of National Bingo Night was “boring” after just two episodes, the younger Bachchan thinks there are plenty of people watching the show, and he is already looking forward to the next season.

“If the rating is so high, it means the show is working. It can’t just be my face,” Abhishek told the Indo-American News Service in a recent interview. “If it was just my face, then other artists who have been on shows earlier would have gotten the same rating.”

Irrespective of ratings, Abhishek said he prefers hosting and anchoring to acting, primarily because there is not as much to worry about in the former as compared to the latter.

“Anchoring is easier because, in acting, there are so many other things that come into play,” Abhishek told reporters through IANS. “Here (on television), you just have to be yourself.”

Even more, Abhishek’s attraction to hosting a show on the small screen was the ability to interact with audiences – something he feels he cannot do in film or even serials.

“I wanted to do something on television that would have been interactive with my audience, and Bingo was like that,” Abhishek added in his interview. “There are 200 (audience members in studio) with whom I interact, and then we have the whole home-viewing audience that sits and watches the show. I was really looking to something like that.”

Elaborating on his ability to interact with audiences through hosting an in-studio program in front of a live crowd, Abhishek told IANS television that it can work to an actor’s benefit if one knows how to take advantage of it.

“Today, we actors just have another platform to do our work on,” the son of Amitabh Bachchan and husband to Aishwarya Rai said. “Television is part of a visual entertainment medium. Actors have found an opportunity and another platform to connect with the audience.”

However, Abhishek did not commit to ditching his film career for a gig in television, but he seems to be happy on Bingo.

“As of now, I am only doing Bingo,” he frankly said. “It’s a 13-episode season, after which, if Colors (the channel that airs the show) renews it, we’ll come back with season two.”

The show, which started airing this season on January 23rd, opened to the highest ratings ever for a Bollywood-anchored non-fiction entertainment show in two years, Television Audience Measurement announced last week.

According to news reports, the opening show of this season’s Bingo with Abhishek as the host earned higher ratings than television programs previously hosted by other Bollywood celebrities, including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Shilpa Shetty, Rajeev Khandelwal and even Abhishek’s father Amitabh.

In addition to Bingo, Abhishek is still maintaining a healthy film schedule, working on films such as Crooked, Raavan, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan and the Bollywood version of The Italian Job.