Sony Mix intends making weekends' wow!

Sony Mix is introducing Wow Weekends, promising to make Saturday and Sunday more entertaining for the entire family.  It plans to add to its music library and introduce fresh programmes and exciting shows.

The new shows would include reviews, trivia, vox pops and more. ‘Baaton Baaton Mein’ promises to take you back to the musical era of 60s to 90s. Jam Room (Season 2)’, meanwhile, has returned with present generation voices revisiting old melodies.

The channel claims that it would sprinkle a number of beautiful moments and shows throughout the weekend. Neeraj Vyas, Sr. EVP & Business Head, Sony MAX, Sony MAX 2 and Sony MIX says, “In Sony Mix we keep inventing and focus on being innovative all the time, irrespective of whether we have the ratings or not. We are known in the genre to be a channel with a difference, a channel with a very keen musical layer.”

The channel connects with different target groups through its different shows. It has shows catering to various age groups from 5 to 55 and intends keeping it that way. Vyas emphasises, “We are distinct from others. We are known as a brand that stands for music and music alone. We maintain our individuality, we don’t have any animated characters or any stand-up comedians. We don’t divert ourselves from the world of music.”

The channel has a marketing plan ready to make sure that the changes in programming over the weekend are sampled by everyone. “We have initiated a lot of PR around it. Our network channels are playing our promos. As MSM is a substantially large network, that definitely comes in handy. There is some print advertising as well. While on the digital front, we will be active on twitter and Facebook with this whole proposition,” enlightens Vyas.

Weekend shows are not really the channel drivers for music channels, and one wonders how programming enhancement over the weekends would benefit Sony Mix.  Vyas smiles, “Music channel ratings do not differ beyond a point and we are very steady in that department. Key ratings that come up for the music channel are essentially from eight in the morning to 12 noon. Weekend Wow is not to see the rating increase. Time spent on a music channel is by far the lowest at four and a half minutes on weekends. Intent is to extend the promise that we always make the viewer see things differently. If you see things differently, you will be able to do things differently.”

With the focus on right music mix and refraining from introducing any unrelated shows the channel is entrenching itself as a purely musical channel. Wow Weekends is a step in this direction. Definitely the right strategy. And whether done with the intent of garnering TRPs or not, it sure would pay dividends to the channel in times to come.

zeba@adgully.com