THE EVOLUTION OF ‘MTV’ INDIA

MTV India, launched in 1996, is an Indian television channel specializing in reality, music and youth culture programs. MTV mainly focuses on youth related content.

At the beginning of the MTV journey, they did not find the right fit as for the Indian youth demographic, because of which in the year 1997, changes were brought about to the look and feel of the channel. The tagline ‘MTV Enjoy’ came into being, they incorporated familiar Indian faces to host the shows in order to welcome more viewers and also produced content with playlists featuring new songs that the young generation was into.

Eventually, reality TV shows began to air on this channel. Some of the very famous shows of MTV India are- Roadies, Splitsvilla, Love School, MTV Unplugged, Troll Police and many more.

In the very same year, MTV India started hosting award shows. The broadcasted their first show ‘Kitni Mast Hai Zindagi’ in the year 2004. However, after a certain span of time, the show lost it’s essence and the channel was losing it’s viewership.

Hence, they stared pumping non-music programming to their audience which was well received. By the year 2008, they had a number of new shows such as Fabulous Lives, Loveline Reloaded, Discover n Download and many more. With this they were able to bring in more viewers which in turn increased MTV’s revenue. Video Jockeys were welcomed. A lot of big names in Bollywood got their start on MTV as VJs or contestants.

In 2014 they launched Pepsi MTV Indies, an indie music in partnership with Pepsi Co and in 2016 MTV Indies was replaced by MTV Beats. In 2020 the channel currently airs mega popular reality shows such as MTV Splitsvilla, MTV Love School, MTV Ace of Space, etc.

MTV India has been a well demanded channel of the Indian television.