Who killed the music?

It rocked
In 1981,when MTV launched on the American TV network,it didn’t pull any punches about its potential for change. The first music video it aired was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. Twelve years later,when it arrived in India as MTV Asia,and then in 1996,as a full-fledged channel,it marked a moment in Indian pop culture. The video,here,killed Chitrahaar. We went from half-hour once a week of stodgy Bollywood song and dance to back-to-back videos all day long. From Jeetendra and Sridevi dancing on drums to long-haired Slash,letting it rip in the cold November rain. Grainy DD footage gave way to the barrage of quick,hyperactive graphics and sound,in many ways a precursor of the speed of the internet.
Simi Biswas Sharma was in her teens,growing up in Kolkata and rushed headlong to be part of the MTV generation. “I was an MTV junkie. I would rush back from school dot at 4 in the evening to watch Rahul Khanna host MTV Most Wanted. I wore black nail polish,my pendant was a leather skull. You bet,MTV was blamed when my report card wasn’t great,” she says with a laugh.

INTERNET KILLED THE VIDEO STAR
So what changed? How did Splitsvilla replace classic rock? If the teenagers of the Nineties were the MTV generation,today’s youngsters are more identified as the iPod generation. Technology has changed the way we experience music,our music collection now fits into a hand-held gadget,the chosen platform for bands world over is YouTube. How could music channels have been buffered from the change? The fundamental difference today is in the way youngsters consume music. Sharma needed request shows and VJs to play the music she wanted to hear. Today’s music fan has to switch on her laptop,stream songs off the internet,create a playlist and carry it with her in her MP3 player. Do we still need a music channel? “No one depends on television for music anymore,” agrees Deb. “Earlier,everyone didn’t have a computer,they didn’t have access to Youtube. So MTV was important.”

Luke Kenny,former Channel V VJ who hosted the popular show After Hours,says it’s time to move on. “Music channels are obsolete now. It was a phase that came in the mid-80s and lasted into the 1990s. But the internet and mobile technology have changed the game. Youngsters don’t need music channels to tell them what they should listen to. Nobody’s to blame. There’s just no future of music on television,” he says.
Worldwide,music channels have had to reinvent themselves. The flagship channel of MTV in the US does not have a single music show. Its primary content is reality shows. Subsidiary channels cater to niche music interests—MTV 2,MTV House,MTV Classic Rock.

In India,the biggest pop culture presence has always been Bollywood. Catering to a tiny audience interested in international music and saying no to the bigger pie made little business sense. So,in 2004,with the launch of VH1 in India,the debate over how desi MTV wanted to be was settled. It remodelled itself in Hindi. But by then,Indian television had begun to glut on song and dance. With shows like Indian Idol (the first season was in 2004-05) and Saregamapa,general entertainment channels stole the thunder by tapping the music talent in the country and combining it with the kind of shlocky drama that fetches TRPs. “We had become a snacking channel for the youth. Ten other channels were playing back-to-back Hindi music videos. We had to be different,” says Swamy.

Two years later,it made a conscious decision to move away from music. It decided to reposition itself as a youth channel. “Ten years ago,if you walked into a college,whether you listened to Deep Purple or Daler Mehndi decided your identity. But now,it’s no longer about music. What defines a young person is the mobile phone he has,the hairdo he sports,the social networking site he is on. So we decided to enter all spaces that youngsters are interested in: tech,fashion,adventure,sport,” says Swamy. A new set of reality shows resulted,such as Splitsvilla,On the Job and Stunt Mania.

MTV,as a brand,is now used to sell everything from bedsheets to printer paper. “As far as we are concerned,anyone who the youth hangs out with is our competitor. Even Barista,” says Sandeep Dahiya,vice-president,communications and consumer products,MTV. The strategy seems to have worked. “In 2006-7,our average weekly GRPs (gross rating points) were 20 plus. Now,we do peak GRPs of around 80 plus. Our revenues have tripled,we have doubled our client base. Our reach and business potential have grown. And yet,you’ll say MTV was a bigger brand in the Nineties,” says Swamy.
Even its rivals have changed. While Channel V was for a long time the only serious contender,over the past two years,UTV Bindass has proved to be a challenge. Bindass,which calls itself a youth channel, has reworked the Roadies template in shows such as Emotional Atyachar and Dadagiri and taken it further. This,and not music television,is the future.

THEY ARE LIKE THAT ONLY
While music lovers have turned away in horror,the music channels have widened their catchment area. “All our content is in Hindi,all our road shows are in Hindi. The packaging is international. Inside is dal roti,it just looks like Italian pasta. All our show names are English but contestants are from small towns,” says Swamy. The winner of the Roadies,season five,was Ashutosh Kaushik,a dhaba owner from Saharanpur.

Writer Palash Mehrotra,whose The Butterfly Generation,a non-fiction book on India’s Generation Now,releases at the end of this year,believes reality shows such as Roadies and Splitsvilla have shown the Indian youth as he/she had not been seen before. “It showed how Indian kids could be so articulate about things like dating or sex. There was a frankness between the sexes … So in that sense it was very real,” he says. Anthony Bansode is a 23-year-old student in Pune,who watches both—Roadies for the adventure and Splitsvilla for the “hot babes”. “Roadies is every youngster”s dream come true. It’s the kind of adventure we don’t get in our boring lives. If there are swear words,it’s because that’s how we speak. It’s normal. It connects with us,” he says. In the aggressive Hindi that is spoken on the shows,in the cat-fights and the sexual objectification of both girls and boys,Mehrotra sees the beginnings of a new code. “You have to realise that the lives of the youngsters are very different from their parents. They are looking for a code to interpret what is right and wrong. These visuals of dating,these narratives of fidelity,loyalty,break-up,that are being watched in Bhopal and Dehradun,they become a way of negotiating and making new rules,” he says.

CAFE’ ROCK
With music channels out of the equation,how do musicians make themselves heard? Over the last few years,independent or “indie” music acts in India have come up the hard way: through live gigs and the internet. Bands like Midival Punditz,Avial,Them Clones,Soulmate and many more have a niche following,especially in metros. Their platforms are venues like Hard Rock Café,Blue Frog in Mumbai and the vast anonymity of YouTube. Not surprisingly,this community is not impressed with the music channels. Tony Jon of Avial,the band from Kerala,is scathing. “MTV,Channel V,it’s all bull****. And who needs them? When we are on YouTube,the whole world is watching us,” he says.

Uday Benegal,whose former band Indus Creed rose to fame in the Nineties,recalls how MTV pushed their band,helped them get sponsors for their videos by assuring them of airplay. “Yes,it is entirely possible now for a band to bypass a music channel and play live and be heard. But a music channel can give you the push that internet cannot. On YouTube,you discover things by accident,” he says.
Is it possible to produce a good music show and still get TRPs? If music channels have lost faith,Coke Studio,a music TV series from Pakistan,could show them the way. It’s an immensely popular show that brings together the best musical talent in their country,from Atif Aslam to Rahat Fateh Ali Khan,in live studio recording versions. A music show minus clutter or squabbling judges,a desi version of MTV Unplugged.
And it plays on MTV Pakistan._with Pooja Pillai