On the musical track to success

``Modhalla sambhar...aparama nee,'' the legendary Quick Gun Murugan said once upon a time on TV and it wasn't a Tamil channel. It was just a music channel with attitude. Desi with a strong regional flavour, brave, whacko, outrageously bold, with its strong individuality.

``Kindly excuse. (V) are like this only'', went the punch-line on the channel. Faces have now changed, and so have strategies. Channel (V), a couple of years ago, came out with all new positioning of being India's only ``youth'' channel. Now, it's ``back to music''.

``It was a conscious decision to come up with programming designed for the youth, not just music, but travel, game shows, quizzes, trends and stuff. It was a brilliant concept, but ahead of its time,'' Executive vice- president of Programming for TV, STAR India, Sameer Nair updates Sudhish Kamath on the STAR's new discoveries.

`GONE INDIA' is gone. So have the everyday guests on Late Night (V). And most of the new shows that cropped up when the channel came up with a new avatar about one and half years ago - being ``India's only youth channel''. What happened?

``India is a single TV-home market. Homes that have a large family, but just one TV. So youth don't have access to it. Imagine a home here at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. today, people at home will be watching some soap on Sun TV,'' says Sameer.

``We've realised that. But I'm still saying it (the `youth channel' concept) is a brilliant concept, but at this stage it is too expensive to do programming for the youth. Not that the youth are not ready for it, the Indian TV scenario is not ready for it,'' he explains.

``Maybe in a couple of years, the scenario will be ready for it. But now, we've realised what works. So we're playing great music and greater attitude,'' claims a confident Sameer.

``Our road-shows had been a great hit. So we got them restarted again. Live concerts and music are completely our kind of thing now. We are very focussed. We have a music policy. We will play music under three categories: Hit, Familiar and New. We are great at `breaking' New videos,'' he says, adding that `Mambo No.5' played over a month on Channel (V) before it hit the other music channels.

``We are not into the language business that we can say what per cent of our programming is desi, and what per cent International. We are about great music and greater attitude - be it Daler Mehndi, Adnan Sami or J.Lo. Our skew is in as much as the late teens and the early twenties. That's the person Channel V0 is, a channel someone in that age-group can relate to''.

``Music channel business is all about perception and attitude. The modern day youth is multi-faceted - they watch TV, they go for movies, they surf the net, they do SMS... things unheard of a few years ago. I have lived in Chennai between '84 and '94. Today, you drop into HFO at 11-30 p.m. on a weekday, and the place is rocking,'' says Sameer quite excitedly.

``Cool is a very passe word. What is cool? Having a girl-friend could be cool, getting into IIT could be cool, being an artist could be cool...To different people, it means different things.''

``What is in today, is out tomorrow. At one time last year, everybody was crazy about cargos and carpenters just like people were crazy about jeans. Things come and go. Our music is just like that. We define what's in and also reflect what's in,'' says Sameer talking about DOT, Channel V0's latest icon, DOT (Duraiswamy Of Tiruchi), an animated character who's a three year old genius.

Finally, now, how is Channel V0 different from MTV? Is it different? Are the channels vying for the same audience or a different audience? And the answer comes: ``Frankly, we don't know what their audience is. But we know who our audience is.

When we came up with KBC, we did not try to find out which channel is playing what. We knew KBC would work. We know great music and greater attitude works for us. And that's where we are going to consolidate,'' goes his signature tune.

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