MUMBAI: It's been more than a decade but the show still stands strong. While one would think that a reality show that provokes its guests non-stop on national television, would be doomed at the outset, MTV Roadies, even in its 12th year has kept its audience glued to their television sets.
The show continues to rule the genre, thanks to two factors, one, impressive numbers and two, strong audience base available for the programme.
Just as any other reality show, this one has its own audience (though not as big as one on a GEC), a digital presence, merchandising units and marketing campaigns.
Even after ruling the small screen in the youth space for 11 years, this year too the show has proved its might. Season X2, which hit the television screens with the audition phase on 24 January has already become the number one youth reality and fiction show.
It had an impressive opening as it clocked around 175 TVTs compared to other shows like Sadda Haq on Channel V with 165 TVTs, Love By Chance on bindass with 128 TVTs and Dare 2 Date on Channel V with 65 TVTs in the week four of TAM TV ratings. The ratings are in CS 15-24 AB in HSM markets.
In the sixth week, the show garnered 139 TVTs.
According to MTV India EVP and business head Aditya Swamy, the franchise has lived happily for 12 seasons and Roadies X2 has ripped the format open. “This season, we went for a complete makeover. From bringing in a new format to new judges to brining in some unexpectedness,” he informs.
The channel states that the cult show has witnessed a hike of 60 per cent in viewership as compared to the last season. Moreover, its reach increased from 1.1 per cent in episode one to 2.2 per cent.
According to Swamy the major viewership of the show comes from the HSM markets, mostly from Mumbai, Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
The key highlights for the success of the show, according to Swamy are: Core understanding of its target audience. “We brought in fresh twists to keep the old audience surprised and new audience hooked. We dared to be different by getting in personalities that the youth can easily relate to. From one Bollywood personality to one sportsman and television personality while Rannvijay continues to garner female attention,” he informs.
Before the launch of the show, the channel continued to build engagement via other mediums as well. It launched a mobile Torrentz app where users can download complete episodes and watch them at their own convenience for free.
To further up the entertainment quotient for the youth, the channel will be launching Roadies Fantasy League - which for the first time will see a sport-like fantasy team competition for a reality show.
It will also have the Roadies Prediction application - which will have a betting environment where people can bet on outcomes of the show.
MTV will continue doing Audiosodes - Podcasts where people can catch up on what happened in an episode. To top it all, it will come up with a section called Fast Forward on its website which is like a highlights package and has the entire episode crunched in around seven minutes.
On the digital front, the official Facebook page of Roadies X2 garnered 18,347 likes at the time of filing this report. On Twitter the buzz is strong too with the show’s official page delivering around 64.3 thousand followers.
This season Hero MotoCorp continues to be the title sponsor and Vivo Smart Phone has come onboard as the associate sponsor along with traditional long term partners like Mountain Dew, Ceat tyres etc. In all, the channel has roped in 12 sponsors this season.
“The evolution of a show is a big reason for its success. Many thought that Roadies is incomplete without twin hosts Raghu and Rajiv and the new judges won’t be able to pull off the show very well. But the numbers says it all,” says a media planner.
