Amit Jain

December 2008

MTV was one of the first international channel brands to stake its claim in Asia’s pay-TV landscape. And it learned early on that the key to connecting with Asian youth was in delivering international fare with a healthy dose of local music and local trends. MTV Networks’ journey in Asia, however, has not been without its hurdles. As part of its restructuring in the region last year, MTV Networks tapped Amit Jain as executive VP and managing director for its operations in India, China and Southeast Asia. Jain had already led a revamp of MTV Networks India, including driving the formation of the local joint venture, Viacom18. He discusses his strategies for MTV Networks’ linear and digital brands with World Screen.

WS: Have you found any similarities between the markets you now oversee?

JAIN: I see great similarities in the stage of evolution of the media markets. With the exception of Singapore, Hong Kong and, to some extent, Taiwan, the markets are in a fairly rudimentary stage of development. They are fledgling pay-TV businesses, which contribute a fairly small percentage of overall television revenues and an even smaller percentage of eyeballs.

WS: Looking at each of the territories, starting with India, how is Viacom18 progressing?

JAIN: That’s really been a labor of love! I spent more than two years of my life doing nothing but first putting MTV India back on the rails, and then getting the joint venture together. Unlike all the other multinational media players in India, we very quickly realized that given the complexities and the challenges of the Indian environment, having a local partner would be an uncommon competitive advantage. While Viacom does bring outstanding strengths in content, branding and creativity, the key ingredients for success in India lie in distribution, operations and understanding local consumers. That involved a substantial rethink of our strategy.

We put up the joint venture with the ambition of not only ramping up all the MTV brands but also putting up a general-entertainment channel, Colors. [Since the venture’s formation] MTV is doing exceptional stuff. We’ve got some very strong reality series. Nickelodeon, which used to be a number four player among eight channels in the kids’ space, has picked up every quarter and is now jostling to be the number two kids’ channel in the country. VH1 is doing amazingly well. Colors, among seven general-entertainment channels in India, came in on the number three spot in the first week after launch. We attribute part of this to a very strong and well-thought-through marketing campaign and some excellent distribution. The challenge is to sustain this early momentum.

WS: What are the strengths of your Southeast Asian business?

JAIN: There’s no Southeast Asian strategy. If you’re willing to be a small pay-TV player and have the one or two feeds that cut across all these markets, then you can have a pan-Southeast Asia strategy. These are really diverse audiences with unique cultures and unique languages and you need to respect those differences and give them entertainment content that is relevant and engaging. We’ve evolved our business model now and we’re going for a network of local partnerships for expanding the reach and relevance of MTV. We’ve set up local partnerships in Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. In these four areas, we have 75-percent local content on MTV. Asian youth consume somewhere between 70 [and] 90 percent local music, depending on the market. Respecting that youth insight, we’ve structured the MTV business model and our content model accordingly.

WS: Does that model also apply to Nickelodeon?

JAIN: With Nickelodeon, we’ve not had to go in for a localized content strategy. We made two basic changes. One is localizing our languages. The same feed serves four languages depending on the market it services: Indonesian, Malaysian, Mandarin and English.

We’ve also taken a bold and decisive step into the terrestrial-TV market, with branded Nickelodeon blocks. We’ve established our first in Malaysia with Media Prima, and it’s given us astounding results. In the afternoon, very often we’re the highest-rated show on TV. Media Prima is replicating this strategy in the Philippines. That’s how we’re dealing with the challenges of content and relevance and reach in a fairly restricted pay-TV environment.

WS: And what approach are you taking with China?

JAIN: China is the big prize. All of us are standing in queue to set up something worthwhile in China. What one requires is a business predicated on understanding the local culture. We have to respect the fact that it is not only the most ancient, but one of the most evolved cultures in the world. It’s worth our while to build up something from scratch. We are in the process of doing some very, very basic foundation building. My focus is on building the team for the future.