MUMBAI: Hindi music channel MTV Beats is celebrating its fourth anniversary this December with a month long interactive campaign - #ShandaarChaar. The channel is spreading the cheer this month with fun and engaging contests for its young viewers. #ShandaarChaar will have 31 contests for 31 days and is being sponsored by The Originally Fresh Brand, Celio and Roadmaster Cycles. The campaign has already seen over 4 million participants in the first week.
For its anniversary celebrations, MTV Beats has integrated its on-air and digital promotions under the theme of #ShandaarChaar with contests based on Gibberish Puzzles which will be all about decoding the clues to guess the movie, the Bollywood star, the song, the singer etc. giving winners a chance to win exciting prizes. The campaign is being promoted across MTV Beats HD and SD as well as through its social media handles.
Viacom18 Voot select, youth, music & English entertainment head Ferzad Palia said, “MTV Beats has been a constant leader in the contemporary music category while also holding a strong 18 per cent market share in the overall music genre. Throughout the lockdown period this year, the channel witnessed over 60 billion+ minutes of total viewing and cumulative reach of over 320 million. In a genre that usually lacks differentiators, MTV Beats clearly stands out against its competitors as a result of its varied original programming.”
MTV Beats has been branching out to make mainstream music more inclusive, be it with a dedicated slot for Punjabi music – Punjabi Beats; a gender atypical music album – MTV Beats Love Duet; encouraging its platform for independent artists with MTV Beats Discover. The channel will continue to focus towards upping the ante in original content in the near to mid-term, added Palia.
MTV Beats has had a unique growth story through the lockdown period. Its lockdown programming, with five original shows, has been the biggest gainer in viewership & engagement in the entire genre with cumulative reach of 111 million with viewing minutes reaching 2.5 billion. The channel’s content-around-music saw weekly viewership skyrocket by 27 per cent. MTV Beats was the only channel in the genre to clock positive gains in east (three per cent), west (one per cent), north (three per cent), south (23 per cent) regions collectively. Most importantly, viewership growth was not skewed but equally distributed across markets, not even leaving behind the south region - an uncharacteristic phenomenon for Hindi music channels.
In terms of slot performance, popular shows like MTV Beats Sessions From Home, Dil Beats Lockdown Love, MTV Beats Pyaar Karo Na, Baba Ki Chowki Lockdown Edition have grown in the range of 60-80 per cent. MTV Beats just launched a brand-new show, House Party With DJ Cheats that revolves around Bollywood remixes curated specially for the channel, by India’s biggest Bollywood DJ – DJ Chetas.
