MUMBAI: Southern Spice Music (SS Music), the Chennai-based multi-lingual music channel targeting the youth, has entered its sixth year of operations. The channel is firing on all cylinders to keep up with its young and contemporary image, and on the anvil are a few new properties.

This year, the new program line-up begins with Reliance Launchpad, a new programme aimed at discovering new singing talents. The show will be a contest for aspiring singers, hosted by a VJ/singer and judged by a prominent personality. All shortlisted participants will be promoted by the channel and the public will vote to choose the winners.

Cinema Central is a new film-based programme on Southern Spice Music, hosted by VJs Pooja and Gibran. Cinema Central focuses entirely on film personalities and their respective films. It flows as either a film-based episode or artist-based episode. Each episode shall be a weekly, 30 minutes programme featuring about a film or film-star. The interaction mainly focuses on the star's entry into the film Industry and the developments in career of the artiste to date. Cinema Central screens exclusive clips of an particular film star and also focusses on the performance of the team behind the camera.

Briefing indiantelevision.com, SS Music programming & production manager James D'Cruz states, "It is popularly observed that it is a mammoth task to retain attention of the youth for any period of time. A vibrant youth-targeting channel as ours needs to retain not only their interest and viewing, but also encourage involvement through interactions with our VJs. And this quest for new programming from our end has led to introduction of new programs, currently welcomed by our target viewers. We do hope that our upcoming properties will go on to make a big success of themselves and in the process, help maintain the top of the line ranking among music channels, particularly in South India."

Alternately, Southern Spice Music will propose a theme for every month and scenes from movies within that theme will be telecast accordingly. For instance, if it's the Vijay month, the viewer will have the pleasure of getting to see excerpts from four movies starring Vijay that month. This will be accompanied by interviews and reviews of the star.

The channel will retain its 'senior-most' property Reach Out, which is into its sixth year. VJ Craig continues to host the show.

One of the recent properties SS Music has launched, Room with a View, delves into the glitzy world of cinema with our movie aficionado VJ Shyam, who interviews stars, reviews the latest block-busters and takes you into the world of movie-making. An add-on to this show is the premiere night titled Red Carpet, which covers film premieres and celebrity parties.

New properties Is-cool and Between the Lines mainly target viewers, who are looking for non-film/non-music content. Is-cool is a programme that captures the snapshots of the school life. The show incorporates the history of the school that is being profiled, its vision, academic curriculum and extra-curricular activities. Is-cool was launched in March.

Between the Lines, which also launched in March 2006, is a 20-minute talk show. The programme features high profile personalities from the world of literature and the fine arts.