Interview: Neeraj Vyas, Business Head, Sony MIX

The channel that took one and a half years of planning is finally up for show. Neha Saraiya finds out the plans of sailing it in the cluttered market.

The youngest member of the MSM family of channels - Sony MIX - goes on air from today. There is a sheer sense of speculation among its ilk with a positive enthusiasm in air from the company's side. In an exclusive interaction with Neha Saraiya of BestMediaInfo.com, Neeraj Vyas, Business Head, Sony MIX shares his plans of sailing in the market.

Q) How is the content of the channel differentiated among the existing lot?
Ans) The first thing is that we have divided the entire day as per moods and tempos of a general person. What we clearly feel is that the person who wakes up in the morning is in a rush to reach his office. So, if you play 'sheela ki jawani' at seven in the morning then the audience will obviously not render to it. Thus there is a set of various moods over the entire day and these moods have to be supported by certain kind of music. Like morning is the time to play devotional songs, while afternoon we shall be catering to the target audience of Housewives.

Q) Music channels today, have moved a step further, by developing various programs that have become highly popular among the youth. What are your plans on this front?
Ans) Indeed, Music channels have moved towards the youth reality route. Be it MTV, as they run Roadies or Masti that has comedians like Raju Srivastava on board with lots of gags in between. 9XM has also funny cartoon characters that takes away the focus from music. Also, these channels have a list of 150 tracks that they play repeatedly in the entire month, but we have a playlist that is three times bigger than this. Thus we consider ourselves a pure music channel with no animated characters, no VJs and none of anything that you see on music channels today.

Q) But then your Target audience is also youth. Isn't it?
Ans) The rest of the music channels on air are targeting the age group of 14-25 years but we look to cater to the group of 24-40 years of age as no nobody is catering to them currently. Thus we shall not be playing the songs of last three months but we shall be including songs of last three years making our target base much wider.

Q) Which are your key markets in terms of viewership?
Ans) If you look at TAM numbers currently, then metros have the largest viewership. But the fact is that the fat chunks of revenues do not come from this market. Thus we aim for Markets like Maharashtra, UP and MP. These are the focus markets for us and Punjab to some extent but it then has a dominance of local music as well.

Q) And what about distribution level?
Ans) We are aiming a penetration of 50-55% in the Indian market, which is good for any new start up.

Q) Do you have plans to switch to regional music?
Ans) No. We are a pure bollywood music channel.

Q) What about the ad structure? Any new schemes introduced for marketers?
Ans) We have a dedicated team for it. Our basic aim is to increase the time spend on the music channel and we shall get the numbers automatically.

Q) Any Specific targets set up by you?
Ans) Not really. We are looking to enter the market in a different manner and not just restrict to be a youth oriented channel.

Q) Will the channel be aired in international markets as well?
Ans) No plans for international markets, as of now.

Neha@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com