English entertainment holds a special place in Indian television. Although the proportion of the audience that watches English entertainment channels is small, the ones who do watch it are very loyal to the genre. English entertainment on Indian television started with a few American and British channels airing highly censored programmes. However, the whole scenario changed with the advent of satellite television. The bandwidth capacity increased significantly and a large number of channels could be accommodated on a single bandwidth. More and more channels started their business in India and people got sensitized towards American and British culture. The grip of censorship was also loosened. As a result, today, there are a large number of English channels that can be enjoyed by all age groups in India. However, one of the English channels that has always enjoyed popularity in India is MTV.
MTV has always been the leading music channel in India. For a long time, MTV was synonymous with music. However, with the increase in popularity of reality shows all over the world, MTV introduced a bunch of quality reality shows that were targeted towards the youth. However, Viacom 18 was facing difficulty in managing pure music based programmes and reality shows on the same channel. So, they decided to split the channel into MTV and MTV Beats. This was a very good strategy as it expanded the channel to greater horizons. When it came to English music based entertainment, they introduced Vh1 instead of diversifying the brand of MTV. This was because MTV was already an established music channel in the US and Vh1 stood for English music that had been specially curated for the Indian audience.
The Indian audience embraced Vh1 with open arms and today, its popularity has reached new heights among the youth. When it comes to curating foreign content according to Indian tastes, no one can do better than Viacom 18. This was evident when we saw Viacom 18 taking the brand value of Vh1 into the streets by introducing a multi genre music festival- Vh1 Supersonic. The launch of Vh1 Supersonic as a grand music festival not only popularised Vh1 as a brand but also opened the doors for English music. Today, Vh1 Supersonic has got great fan following all over the country. Moreover, the show also provides a platform for Indian artistes who perform in English to showcase their talent.
