First, let’s get one thing out of the way. MTV is not going anywhere. Last year, Paramount Global had announced that in some countries, the channel would stop broadcasting by December 25. Millennials around the world dropped their TV remotes in panic. Turns out, the company was only referring to sub-channels like MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. Regular MTV continues in India too, although we’re not sure who’s actually watching.
The channel has been running here for 30 years. At its peak, MTV was that glorious space that filled the void between Chitrahaar on Doordarshan and YouTube on the Internet. How did Indians know that Michael Jackson was the demon in his Thriller video? Or that Milind Soman was about to come out of the wooden box in Alisha Chinai’s Made in India? Or that it was two grandfathers who were actually singing the Macarena?
Well, MTV was always about more than music. For a generation coming into their own in the 1990s, it was a rebellious older sibling who spoke their language, played their national anthem, understood their angst. Sure, MTV played rock, pop, and hip-hop. But it also taught a generation to speak, dress, joke, rebel and belong. Mumbai-based writer Shubarna Mukherjee Shu, 43, remembers 1999, when she was sitting in front of the TV in her living room, landline in hand, as MTV’s Most Wanted played the top songs of that time. “Me and my friends would be on a conference call, praying collectively,” for a broadcast of any song from the Backstreet Boys’ album Millennium. “When they finally played one, we started screaming and singing into the phone. It made our day.”
This kind of magic didn’t happen by accident. Here’s how it was all part of a grand design.
forever young
MTV India made its announcement with swagger. In January 1996, Slash from Guns N’ Roses flew to Bangalore to jam with Indus Creed at the launch of the channel. Months later, MTV partnered with Michael Jackson for the Mumbai leg of his History World Tour. There was a road show of 11 cities, MTV Get It, stopping at college campuses and understanding what young India is all about.
“The Indian music industry had not developed,” says Seher Bedi, who joined MTV as a producer in 1995, and was one of the channel’s first employees. “We had singers and bands, but no music videos. Outside India, no one knew these artists existed.” The team started from scratch, shooting videos, packaging live events, building sets. “That first year, the buzz was crazy,” recalls Bedi. “When we came to just record concerts, the audience went crazy.”
The graduating class of Indian pop – Alisha Chinai, Daler Mehndi, Lucky Ali, Shaan and Sagarika, KK, Sonu Nigam, Euphoria, Colonial Cousins, Indian Ocean and more – all made their mark by airing on MTV and rival channel (V). “AR Rahman was not known outside the South then,” recalls Cyrus Broacha, who hosted the show on the channel until 2008. “We were shooting for Maa Tujhe Salaam in the desert, and I told him, ‘Get that bag from the corner.’ I didn’t know that he would become such a big personality. At that time, he was just a colleague.
International music was divided into simplified sections: unplugged for acoustic recordings; Alternative Nation for indie and alt genres; Headbangers Ball for noise metal and rock; Select audience request. And, in a move that made Millennials forever grateful, MTV showed the song name, artist, album, and often the video director’s name with every play. What a time to be alive!
Alex Kuruvilla, who headed MTV India between 1999 and 2006, says, “The channel’s high-energy aesthetics left its mark on advertising, film, comedy, graphic design – everything. Show business as we know it today would not exist without it.” Sehgal and knew the difference between RHCP and RATM.
OG influencers
India needed a little help processing these new sounds. Enter VJs (video jockeys), young over-confident Indians who dressed stylishly, had radical opinions and danced in between songs. It was immediately the best job in the country.
“Rahul Khanna was in Singapore at the time, so Tara Deshpande and I were technically the first local VJs,” says Broacha. In 1997, Malaika Arora joined the hosting club of Club MTV and Loveline. That same year, MTV launched its nationwide VJ hunt, and discovered Maria Goretti and Nikhil Chinapa.
“I almost didn’t go,” recalls Goretti, who was a model at the time and was asked to audition in the last week of the hunt. “I thought maybe they needed more people on stage. My sister pushed me. I won. It changed my life.” Chinapa, an architecture student, was hosting radio shows and live events in Bangalore for pocket money. He participated willingly. “Whatever comes my way, I’ll try,” he says. He moved to Mumbai, started with hosting Select, eventually founded the Submerge and Sunburn music festivals and shaped the channel VH1 Supersonic.
The work seemed like fun, but it was relentless: VJs shot links, hosted on-ground events, visited colleges, met brand partners and distributors, attended parties. The salary was modest; The real currency was access – to artists, to ideas, to an increasingly globalized world.
“I don’t think any of us realized how much of an impact it was having on us,” says Shenaz Treasury, who hosted MTV Most Wanted and MTV Chillout and moved to MTV Asia. “It came to me later, when people in Singapore would recognize me on the street and tell me how MTV shaped their style, humor, even their slang, that MTV was bigger than any one show.”
beyond music
In 1998–99, the channel went mainstream by incorporating Hindi music into its programming. “While the DNA of the brand was global, everything else – the IP, programming, shows, marketing was highly local,” says Kuruvilla. “MTV is proud of its local successes.”
It’s most enduring hit: Goat, in which Broacha essentially pranks strangers on camera. No one was exempt – not even film stars and cricketers. The MTV generation was fearlessly laughing at themselves, at others, at life. It spawned 13 contestants within six months and ran for more than a decade. Broacha recalls the reaction of an unexpected fan: “Someone called my landline and said, ‘Bal Thackeray is speaking,’ he spoke clearly in English, and said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I love this show. I stop all my meetings at 3.30 to watch it. Keep up the good work.'”
The channel took Indian music to the world. In 1999, Bedi was sent to New York to cover the MTV Video Music Awards, where AR Rahman won the International Audience Choice: MTV India for the title track, Dil Se Re, from Mani Ratnam’s film Dil Se. She recalls, “We shot with them all over NYC talking about their favorite places and music.” “Later, we took Colonial Cousins to MTV London for the first Unplugged.”
VJ Mini Mathur between 1999 and 2003 remembers interviewing Richard Gere at an AIDS concert, stepping in at the last minute to interview Deep Purple and hosting Aamir Khan with the cast of Lagaan. “The actors were nervous – it was their first big interaction with the camera. I shifted easily between English and Hindi, and Aamir looked at me with respect.” Goretti remembers being part of the song fun, which parodied popular music. “Cyrus and I copied Urmila Matondkar’s song. We also did Koi Mil Gaya: Mini was Rani Mukherjee, Cyrus was Shahrukh, and I was Kajol. Crazy stuff!”
YouTube launched in 2005, Spotify launched in 2008 worldwide (and in India in 2019). Music videos, the lifeblood of MTV, were now free and on-demand. So, it turned to reality shows. It was the new generation of MTV who dreamed of making it to Roadies and Splitsvilla, who understood the power of their stories and voices. “When people auditioned, they talked openly about trauma – being gay, being thin, being fat, facing abuse for identity,” Chinapa says. “We encouraged young people to speak out.”
We don’t need VJs, handholding or speaking opportunities anymore. We’re doing it all ourselves, editing, adding filters and clapping back at the trolls. But to stamp out the spirit of MTV – Indian yet international, irreverent yet honest – it will take more than shutting down a channel.
From HT Brunch, February 28, 2026
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