MUMBAI: While most music channels depend on bollywood music as their success mantra, the northern markets have a different story to tell. Exploring a new formula in the music space, CNEB and Launchpad launched their first venture, Bhojpuri music channel Hummra M.

Within five months of its launch, the channel is now leading in the market reaffirming the belief that music channels can attain success with regional music.

Beating the leading GEC channel in Bhojpuri, it focused on developing a personality for itself which is regularly ignored by most broadcasters. This was reflected through its tagline ‘Hummri Boli Hummra M’.

The core focus of Launchpad remained not to succumb to the largely dominant bollywood content and instead provide its viewers with local language entertainment. The channel is currently distributed in Bihar, Jharkhand and certain Bhojpuri speaking areas of UP.

As per TAM statistics, the channel is leading in Bihar and Jharkand with a reach of 23 per cent in week two of 2013.

Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, Launchpad partner Vikas Verma said, “We launched in August 2012 in leading Bhojpuri speaking markets with the belief that Bhojpuri music is rocking in terms of content. We took the content and presented it on a colourful and vibrant platform which people liked and it worked well for us too. The people in these markets do enjoy bollywood but they definitely like to consume music in their regional language as well, as can be seen in our leadership status.”

Commenting on the growth in advertising, Launchpad partner Probal Gaanguly said, “The instant success at the launch of the channel has resulted in helping it get various brands and advertisers on-board, who have started getting immense benefits in this huge cluttered TV space. Since Hindi heartland is one of the most important target markets for most big brands, Hummra M is seeing substantial number on brands getting onto the channel. The massive time

spent and GRPs are helping brands to park more and more budgets on this platform.”

Riding high on the success, the group also plans to expand its content offering to other regional markets like Punjab and Bengal in the near future.

As reported by Radioandmusic.com earlier, CNEB and Launch Pad will enter the Punjab market with a regional channel within a few days. The channel will be based on similar lines as Hummra M with animated characters and regional film music being the dominant factors.

Apart from Punjab, the venture is soon set to expand to Bengal with a regional channel slated to launch in April followed by Orissa.

Verma stated, “After the success of Hummra M, we are now all set to launch many more such channels in Punjab and Bengal. We aim to present blockbuster entertainment platforms for the audience and they will see that soon with our channel launches in Punjab and Bengal.”