Today we will give a short glimpse of channels that have been introduced recently or will be launched with such genres and categories.

Sonic (Nickelodeon) – This channel will be introduced shortly by Viacom18 productions. It is based on action loving generation that targets 13-18 year old teenagers. The channel clearly states three main ideas behind the shows’ theme and they are ‘Thrills’, ‘Guts’ and ‘Glory’.

UTV Action – The channel was launched some time back and airs English action genre movies from Hollywood dubbed in Hindi. Even this idea is new and has gained popularity with specific viewers group. This channel is the ultimate Action destination for any fan!

UTV Stars – “Stars” as the name suggests was launched recently that features shows based on Bollywood only. All the gossips, movie reviews, interviews with celebrities etc are the popular sections of this channel.

History – Introduced in collaboration with Network18. The channel roped in one of the highest paid actors “Salman Khan” for the initial promotion of the channel. It is a masala filled version of documentary and lifestyle genres as it features some really cool shows like “Sliced”, “America: The Story of The US” and “Food Tech“.

India’s audience has evolved in terms of TV and its daily dose of entertainment. Many channels realized this fact and shows for every age group, genre etc are on air!!

So which one are you Tuned into?

Star World has created a tab on it’s Facebook page with name “Viewer Partner Programme” which is basically an online form you need to fill to take part in the programme. It asks you for all kind of details like demographic info, choice of shows, educational qualification and occupation.

Based on the forms sent, Star World will get back to users it deems suitable as per their demographic requirement. It will send them emails of surveys which might help them get valuable insights on the channel and response on advertisements or promos. The programme will also invite its participants to take part in “Focussed Group Discussion” which will provide the opportunity to post and exchange information, reviews, ideas, opinions and views (“Postings”) with a view to evoke response(s) for the purpose of product testing, promo assessment and gauging popularity of a particular show on the Channel.

While this is brilliant step, I still am interested in knowing the real number of users who have signed up for this programme. But this is more about technicalities than the fact that it is probably one of it’s kind initiative taken by any TV Channel around the world.

Here are my views on why is this an important step?

• It indicates a change in mindset of channels whose major target audience is youth.
• Using digital media to gain insights about user’s choices is first step towards crowd-sourced television content.
• Social media increases the reach by many folds and its right time when advertisers should also track social reactions to find out programs which are popular among youth.
• This will encourage other channels and producers to take user feedback from online sources and create better programs.

What more should be done?

• Real time reactions about programs can give more information about users likes/dislikes.
• Competitive viewpoint is very important. So every channel should get information not only about it’s own shows but also about it’s competitive programs.
• There should be more openness- Openness in the way data is collected and sold. Every party should be able to get all details related to viewership data. This will put pressure on channels to serve better and relevant content, give advertisers more freedom and will help producers gauge their investments in a better way.

There is a need of more such initiatives from Television channels and production houses. Social media and open platforms can really help the whole ecosystem, where TV channels could make viewers happy with better content and advertisers could clearly know how and where to advertise their stuff.

Do you agree?