In its 25 years of running, MTV has set many benchmarks in the youth entertainment genre cementing itself as the Universe of the Young. Undisputedly, India’s No 1 Youth Entertainment Brand, MTV reaches out to over 300 million homes today and witnessed a whopping 20 billion minutes of watch time on TV and VOOT in 2019.

2019 was a defining year for MTV as it continued to be at the core of all things ‘unscripted’ creating definitive concepts and diverse formats of storytelling. We, at MTV continue to believe in the stupendous power of content that engages, entertains and is platform agnostic. We have not only grown on TV but our consumption on VOOT has grown 3-fold which indicates the exponential growth the brand has seen across TV and digital. As a brand, MTV saw a rise of 30% in watch time on VOOT moving from 6 Billion minutes in 2018 to 8 Billion minutes, this year.

Our most iconic properties continued to garner eyeballs with Roadies fetching an increase of 37% in TSV (improved time spent) over last year and Ace of Space witnessing a 15% rise in TSV just in its second season. While Roadies had 15% more viewers over last year on VOOT, Ace of Space and Love School saw a jump of almost 100%. Riding on our refreshing concepts, we recorded a sizeable 16% growth in views moving from 627 Million in 2018 to 729 Million, this year. We also witnessed a 200% jump in engagement on social media (67 million to 190 million). With 91% jump in time spent over the last two years, MTV continues to dominate the youth genre.

Our biggest launch in 2019 was the category innovator MTV Hustle that opened the doors to India’s underground talent and emerged as a torchbearer of music formats. We coupled it with a 360-degree marketing campaign to garner buzz including India’s first crowdsourced rap - MTV Swagtantra for Independence Day and engaging the local community – Dharavi Underground. We also activated Hustle Cypher- a 12 hour on ground + Digital contest across 5 colleges + 1 public location where commoners were judged by Hip Hop heads across 4 cities. MTV Hustle raked in cumulative views of 109 MN on television and VOOT. (68 MN TV viewers + 41MN views on VOOT). That’s a combined watch time of 434.6 MN mins of watch time on TV & digital.

As for MTV Beats, the viewership share increased to 16% in FY’20 vs 14% in FY’19 with 30% rise in TSV (time spent) across India. Riding on our marquee shows like Baba Ki Chowki, Beats Top 20, we catered to close to 500 million lovers of Bollywood music and triggered the same through partnerships and clutter breaking content.

 MTV also consistently bolstered its efforts in marketing and consumer engagement initiatives and turned 2019 into a year of clutter breaking campaigns, each devised to tap into the young psyche on issues that matter. Our Biryani Emoticon campaign was an effort to unify all food lovers and secure a place in the millennial glossary through a petition. Another successful campaign was MTV Trash Talk, which was an initiative to turn negativity on social media into something meaningful on-ground.

On World Music Day, MTV Beats along with Vh1 presented India’s first-of-its-kind 24-hour online music festival with 40+ distinguished artists that was very well received by audiences.

 MTV’s success is not limited to the realm of broadcasting anymore. As a creative powerhouse, the channel through its branded content arm MTV Brand Studios enabled brands to create their unique stories keeping audiences at the core. Some of our key properties this year included Lakme Academy presents Winged, MTV Pantaloons Style Superstars, Airbnb Live There and LinkedIn MTV Get A Job. MTV also introduced Esports on television through a partnership with Nodwin Gaming along with innovations in on-ground properties like India Music Summit, Social Nation and Bollywood Music Project.
Going forward, we will continue to keep onto our ethos of offering engrossing and contemporary content to our audiences, focus on stories that are relevant and explore multiple avenues to get closer to the end consumers.

(The author is head- youth, music and English entertainment, Viacom18. The views expressed are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)