Inspite of Popstars and other promotions, Music channels have a long way to go. As against a cumulative channel share of over 40% achieved by the three mainstream channels during prime time, top 4 music channels put together manage just about 1.5% share.

In this analysis, we look at the trends over the past few weeks and see how the Channel V popstar strategy has worked out for Star.

The show was launched on 21st February (Week 8) this year to creating a female pop band in India. It was billed as the biggest talent hunts on Indian music scene so far and the initial hype did justify the excitement. Channel V spared no efforts in creating the team from getting the best music directors from bollywood to getting the best people in town to groom the girls. The channel is also known to be spending a fortune on the girls. Reportedly the girls will be paid a hefty Rs 1 lac a month for the initial contract period, which is two years. So has this big bet worked?

Initial numbers definitely suggest a pick up in ratings and channel shares for Channel V. As the graph below shows Channel share picked for Channel V just around the launch. But so did for MTV. The gains as can be seen coming at the expense of other two channels, B4U and etc.

Interestingly, the combined channel share of the 4 channels has remained just about constant through our period of analysis (Week 4 -16) with a brief surge visible during Week 9 to 13 when channel shares rose to touch 1.8%. What is also interesting to note is that Channel V remains behind the other 3 channels except for a brief period just after the launch of Popstars when it surged ahead of B4U.

Though the audience chosen above is wider, the trends change a little if we select a narrow audience of Sec A&B only. Channel V performs better amongst this TG.

TG: CS 15-24 Yrs, Sec AB, 9 city data

A look at an important indicator - Top programmes. Though not exactly organized as the programmes on mass channels Music channel programmes tend to be theme based rather than story based. Depending upon the popularity of the VJ and theme, the ratings vary. B4U music seems to be a hit amongst the target audience with the channel garnering 28 of the top 100 shows during week 16. MTV was a close second with 23 shows. But just a word of caution. This is a result generated on all broad based TG and not a upper SEC TG.

TG: CS 15-24 Yrs, All SEC, 9 city data