MTV sets up content, acquisition, talent arm CAT

MTV has set up a new unit called CAT (celebrity content, acquisitions and talent), to be headed by former Times Of India hand Prakash Nair. CAT will look at leveraging the channel’s relationships with celebrities both in Bollywood, sports and fashion to create celebrity led content that the channel believes is a segment with immense potential in India.

 Ashish Patil, general manager, MTV India elaborates, “Across the world, there is an huge interest in celebrity based content. In India, we are seeing this trend too. The youth today want news related to celebrites from Bollywood, fashion and cricket. MTV has a number of platforms like MTV Big Picture, MTV Style awards, through which we have developed lasting relationships with celebrities, music labels, music directors, stars etc. In the past, we cracked deals with these partners for tactical film promotions. But post the film launch, this content had no shelf life. We wanted to see how we could use this gap in the market for celebrity news with the content that we had, in order to create engaging celebrity led content and use it to our advantage. There was a consumer/business objective and a content objective involved with launching CAT.”

Patil says that advertisers looking to associate with certain celebrities for their brand promotions would find such associations meaningful.

 “MTV as a brand has that relationship with celebrities where they let their guard down and talk to us freely. These collaborations have worked because celebrities value the MTV brand. So we decided to leverage these relationships to create celebrity led content which used these existing relationships to reach out to new heights,” said Prakash Nair, associate vice president, CAT.

CAT’S role will be to deliver fresh content daily to its targeted youth audience, enable properties that become franchises, drive up the freshness and glamour quotient on the channel. CAT’s first production will involve a 'quasi-reality’ mini - series featuring stars of the new movie Dostana and MTV VJ Cyrus Broacha. The series airs from 2nd to 7th November at 7:30 p.m.

The second series as part of CAT’s content will be an Indian version of MTV’s Fabulous Lives, a 13 part series that will showcase celebrities like the Bachchans, Vijay Mallya, Shahrukh Khan and Anil Ambani among others, with opinions, bytes of experts and people associated with the celebrity featured in that episode.