MUMBAI: Having established itself as a pure bollywood channel for around five years, 9XM has now set foot into the non-film space with its new property titled ‘Buzzworthy’. The show will commence from 23 November with Sonu Nigam’s international single ‘Indian Levels’.
The format encompasses one popular track every month irrespective of the language, country and artiste, which has made waves across digital platforms like Youtube, Facebook and more. The property will comprise of the track, artiste interviews and behind the scenes footage, combined into 8-10 vignettes slated to air throughout the day. The collaborative track ‘Indian Levels’ with DJ Aviccii, will be played exclusively on the channel for 10 days and will witness the making of the track along with interviews by both artistes.
Speaking about the property with Radioandmusic.com, 9X Media Group senior VP and content head Amar Tidke said, “Buzzworthy is a platform for songs which have the potential to go viral and are the big hits on the internet. Through this we are also bringing in some non-film songs irrespective of the language and country. But we are still a complete bollywood music channel and are not going down the non-film music route; this is just a small innovation. We believe in constantly innovating and offering new content to our viewers and this is just one of them.”
Though the channel is not creating a block for the property, it is currently evaluating other tracks that have made it big on the web on similar lines as ‘Gangnam Style’ and ‘Kolaveri Di’. Its main aim is to introduce new music forms which are emerging in the Indian music scene and are a rage amongst the youth. “We aim to showcase the song that is creating a rage amongst the audience and want to build on that. We are looking to take this ahead in the long run and this in turn will introduce other viewers to new music forms that can now be seen prominently in bollywood music as well,” he added.
Through this initiative, the channel will now co-exist on the same level as the internet by providing the tracks on television screens. With the internet rapidly gaining momentum in the country, the youth, comprising a major chunk of the audience depends heavily on the digital platforms to discover new music. Tidke aims to bring that power on the television screen as he feels that the discovery and search is easier on TV as compared to internet as one just needs to tune in, so the effort taken is less.
With many other competitive music channels too exploring various initiatives to stay ahead in the rat race, Tidke claims it is just the content that will determine where you stand on the leaderboard. He expressed, “Ratings and competition are part of the game. As a leader, we have to keep innovating. We earlier set the trend by mixing humour and music, an acapella style music video and more. Great content will definitely get you the ratings.”
Trying to keep ahead of the herd, the channel recently launched many innovative properties like ‘Khans pe Dance’ (every Saturday at 8pm) featuring popular tracks of the Khans of bollywood and a ‘Top 9 Countdown’ chart amongst others. Further building on the music innovation front is now ‘the non-bollywood Buzzworthy’ which is set to create a ‘buzz’ on a particular track every month.
But inspite of the recent move, 9XM is firm on its belief of sticking to bollywood music completely and claims it is just an innovation amongst many others set to launch soon.