A chemical engineer by education, Adyanthaya took a detour into advertising before landing up as content head of Channel [V] in May 2002, coinciding with the launch of the first Popstars band Viva. With apt packaging, the Popstars managed to turn the channel's future around.

Now all set to resume new responsibilities as Star News' brand director, Adyanthaya will now handle both on air and off air communication for Star News.

Prior to the responsibility shift, he met indiantelevision.com's Trupti Ghag, and spoke about Popstars, its importance to the channel and more.
Excerpts:

How do you describe reality shows and the music channel equation?
It is only recently that reality TV as a genre has been assigned a name. In its essence, it has been present all along. With the advent of shows like Temptation Island and Survivor, the stark reality portrayed led to the christening of the genre in the country.

We had a show called Gone India, where we followed VJ Purab, going around the country, traveling like normal Indians do. At that time, it was classified as a travel show. Probably, if it had been out now, it would have been classified as a reality show.

Our main motto is to interact with our viewers. The channel demographics would be 15-34 ABC, but the core audience is 18-30, the youth.The youth like to watch themselves on the television, interacting with the camera, the VJs, characters. That defines our involvement with the reality genre. We gauge what kind of situation they deal with and try to capture it.

As far as the mega reality show is concerned, Popstars are the biggest reality show on our channel. But what made it succeed is its fantasy element rather than reality. Indians do not like to revel so much in the reality genre, not everybody wants to watch shows like Big Brother, but we definitely are interested in seeing how people's lives can be transformed. Our Hindi movies are about fantasy. You have to suspend disbelief, which is what attracts the viewers. How do you translate that element of fantasy into reality, that's where Popstars came in.

It transformed five regular girls to the stars that you adore, revere. Popstars as a concept blended reality with fantasy… fantasy of the five girls and another 6,000 too.

During the conceptual stage, did you ever imagine that it would be as big a success?
It was a format that we picked from Zeal TV. But the format was just a framework, the rest was ours. While we were sure that the format would work, we didn't know that it would become a huge success.

One statement that is doing the rounds in media is that although 'Popstars' might have help fillip the channel's TRPs, it wasn't really a commercial success. What do you have to say about that?
Of course, it has been a commercial success. The amount we invested we got back in terms of ad sales, album sales and the brand equity the programme generated. It has delivered on all counts.

How much has 'Popstars' really helped the channel?
Prior to the first edition of Popstars, we were a distant number two. Popstars did really turn our future around. And now with the second edition of the programme, we are really distinctly the number one channel. The recent TAM figures show that we lead the TRP roster by a phenomenal margin during the Popstars telecast.

As compared to last year's 'Popstars', the channel seemed less pushy, be it in terms of publicity or channel promotions this year. Why?
I do not completely agree with that statement, but yes it isn't as high key. We were new to doing reality then, but now we have the learnings. Also I think we might have gone a little overboard, but we had to work on the public image extensively. The show had to be drummed into people's heads.

Popstars is a flagship brand, but unfortunately post the first Popstars, people thought we were a Popstars channel. We should have adopted the Kaun Banega Crorepati strategy. Although KBC topped the popularity charts when it launched, Star Plus didn't just revel on it. They chose to promote Kyunki... and Kahaani... and as we know, within months, they surpassed KBC's popularity.

How and why was Coke roped in to sponsor the event?
In Popstars, they found a good brand fit. When talks were on during the first Popstars hunt, their brand was all about making dreams come true, which fit perfectly with the Popstars theme. Their catch line was Jo chaho ho jaye. The amount of branding that they got around the programme was good, so they are on board for the second hunt as well.