Music is one of the most popular genres of Indian television entertainment. India boasts of Bollywood, which produces thousands of new and original songs every year. This amazes people in the West as they cannot comprehend how a movie industry can churn out so many songs, many of which go on to become chartbusters, in such a short span.
Indians prefer to listen to Bollywood music on their phones, IPods, MP3 players, radio or on TV, or live stream them on audio and video portals. Among all these media, television holds a special place as in most cases, the Bollywood song is accompanied with a choreographed video, in which the film stars act and dance.
Needless to say, there are a number of TV channels aired in India whose primary content is Bollywood music. When MTV was introduced in India, it had a number of rivals already established in the genre, but it managed to become the top music video channel over the years. Today, you would rarely find an Indian who is not aware of or has not enjoyed music videos aired by MTV India.
During the 2000s, the market for reality shows developed in India. People took a break from the slogging serialized drama programmes on entertainment channels and got interested in the reality shows aired on English channels. As a result, Indian channels started introducing reality shows with different concepts as well.
MTV India understood the trend and perfectly blended it with their own brand statement by introducing reality shows exclusively for the youth. It was definitely a bold move to provide slots to reality shows in a music channel, but it worked. The viewership of MTV increased due to the reality shows.
However, MTV soon realised that this strategy is disappointing a section of the audience who were happy with it as being a pure music channel. Then came the decision to introduce MTV Beats, thereby launching a whole new channel for music. Today, MTV India has successfully transformed from a music channel to a youth-oriented entertainment channel, and that too without compromising on the needs of music lovers.
Recently, MTV India introduced a new venture by the name of MTV Extreme. MTV extreme merges reality show with music. MTV Extreme provides budding music artistes of India a platform to showcase their talent. MTV Extreme organized music road shows in various cities of the country and introduced new artistes to the music lovers. This venture of MTV India has been praised a lot by critics and music lovers alike.
