MUMBAI: MTV India, is a very popular music and youth oriented channel. The statics on various social networking websites reveal more about its popularity. On twitter, it has followers 886,794; on YouTube, the MTV India channel is subscribed by 255,940 users while MTV Roadies leads with 677,025 subscribers. Lastly, on Facebook, MTV India has 5,131,490 likes while MTV Unplugged likes 747,605. MTV Roadies has 7.2 million likes and Splitsvilla has 2.9 million fans. The numbers speak volumes about the channel. Thus, we caught up with, Ekalavya Bhattacharya who heads MTV India Digital for over a year now. In a candid conversation with Radioandmusic’s Disha Deshpande, he reveals that the channel gets 10,000 new likes across all of MTV’s Facebook pages every day.

What are the changes you implemented in the digital strategies since you joined?

Traditionally when people say digital they say it in terms of digital marketing. This is one thing that has changed over the last three years at MTV. Digital is not just a subset of marketing; it has become a business where monetisation and marketing go hand in hand. I wouldn’t say that I have been the sole contributor to that but over the past three years the digital strategy at MTV has evolved to a level where we don’t just look at digital as a marketing tool but look to generate revenues from the platform. The monetisation so far has been massive, definitely in multiple crores.

How do you plan your digital strategies and highlight the challenges faced.

Even though we have TV in our name, one has to realise that our viewership is not restricted to television-watching audience. We cater to the age group of 16-30, an audience that moves from one screen to the other, which is why I personally use the term ‘Screenager’ i.e., someone that moves from one screen to another. So you might be watching MTV content on various screens including smart phones, smart television, tablets, laptops, desktops, or wherever. Our aim is to hit all screens. We have the largest fan following on Instagram in India in the youth section, and also, I would say in the whole of television in India. Roadies are the most subscribed television show in India. We were the first ones to experiment with Pinterest, Instagram video; we have integrated whatsapp voting while other channels are still concentrating on SMS
revenue. Chase the Monsoon was a web show of ours where instagram videos and facebook hashtags were integrated. We also have a show on Vine, which is a six second video platform by twitter. We have a fun show on that called MTV Pick Me Up. Our basic strategy is we talk back. You cant talk to the television is you dislike something. But at MTV we like get feedback from people. You troll us we troll you back.

What is the strength of your digital team?

We have a team of nearly 20 people in the office which is available 24/7. We don’t outsource editorial/marketing strategy or content or media planning. We outsource production of some content because you can’t have a full fledged team because having an in-house team at times cannot prove profitable. We work with some very cool and savy, digital production houses. In terms of content, all the ideas come from the creative team inside and the thought process is internal.

Why is there a need to have more and more activity in the social media today?

Our audience is on the social media. Some people might still live in the world where they would use the internet and drive eyeballs to television but the chances of a person reading a post on Facebook and then putting aside the device ‘at 8pm’ to switch on his television to watch the show are very slim. But if you say ‘watch now’, there are chances that he will click on the link and watch it on Youtube. 30 per cent of our content consumption is on mobile devices, which is why more and more people will eventually get more serious about it. The main reason why you won’t see all the General Entertainment Channels (GEC) very serious about digital is because they are still using digital as a marketing platform. The revenue that MTV earns as compared to a GEC would be different. For us, digital becomes a prime source of our revenue, while for a GEC digital might be a very small piece of the pie. Over the next 24-36 months, this pie will increase.

So when did this “switch” from using the web as a digital marketing platform to a content host, begin?

As a media company, it started for us about four years back. Specifically because we are a youth channel and according to internet statistics in India, audiences in the age group 18-24 are the highest percentage of the users. So for us it makes logical sense. But if you see recent the ComScore report, one of the highest video consuming audiences on Youtube is the 30-38 female bracket, which is insane. This is bang on, your GEC audience. A lot of these women are probably in their homes watching their favorite soaps on Youtube, to make up for the episodes lost when the family took over the remote control. As this audience becomes huger and more monetisable, I am sure that even GECs will look at creating specific content for this audience on the web. There is a lot that can be done by GECs on the net than just putting up episodes of their television shows. Big Boss, which is part of Viacom puts up unseen footage. It is a great way to start. These videos get hugely consumed on the web.

For music shows, how is the digital strategy different from that of other shows?

MTV plays a lot of music on television and some people might feel that MTV doesn’t play their choice of music. A lot of people are confused because VH1 and MTV are both part of the Viacom 18 bouquet. VH1 plays international music and MTV is still the prime leader when you talk about non-bollywood music, with a Coke Studio, a Sound Trippin’ and a different rendition on MTV Unplugged. MTV Roots, our platform for promoting indie talent, has been huge. In India, since Bollywood works so well, anyone can just go to YouTube and search for the song they want. That’s when Coke Studio or Sound Trippin’ comes into picture, where the MTV connect is obviously a little higher. Just playing a Bollywood song on your Social Media page or website doesn’t really make any sense. But we still try to play around with music. We have two fun properties; This Day in Music, where we go back in the archives and fish out details about things that happened on a particular day of a particular year, be it the formation of a band or the passing away of a musician. Another music discovery property called Song of the Day is a essentially different genre for each day of the week. It is not just to listen to music. It is a nice discovery platform where you will get to hear some dug out old songs or some new unheard songs. Music is a core part of our strategy but it is not a defining part of our strategy.

On the web we are going to start up a talent platform called MTV Labs which is going to come pretty soon in the month of October or early November, where, an artist can put up his work of art, regardless of how skilled he/she is, and MTV will give them a chance to show it to the public.

How much growth do you witness, on an average, every day in your social media network and other digital platforms like Youtube?

On twitter we get 1000-2000 new followers daily and on Facebook, we get 10,000 odd fans across all our pages, on days when there is no advertising campaign going on. Our website is currently on 5M visits without Splitsvilla or Roadies going on, and that is personally a great achievement for me and the team. With Roadies coming in now, this number will just spike.

In all of this, do you think your television audience has dropped?

I wouldn’t really say so. Television reach has been increasing. We don’t specifically make content for a particular device but for a particular set of audiences which might move from one device to another. The mantra is to create platform agnostic content. Roadies won the most social television show in the world award two years back. It beat the likes of every show in the world like Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, Pretty Little Liars and Glee Project. Obviously, we must have done something right to win the Mashable Awards. Roadies is specifically not made for the web, but what we have done is taken the web and put in on steroids. For instance, if there is a 10 minute interesting fight but it cannot be added into the episode because it is too long, we put it up whole onto the web. Last year we had as many as 175 webisodes. So Roadies on the web, last year, was a daily show and not a weekly episode on the most subscribed YouTube Channels and the visits on our Website are hiking. We want to put out content that makes you emote or elicit some emotion. The basic mantra is to increase the LSC quotient, which is the Like-Share-Comment quotient television.