MUMBAI: Southern Spice (SS) Music, which was launched on 14 April 2001 has turned three today. The Chennai based channel's focus now is to compete with the other players in the music arena and claim No.1 status, and also strive to get an international status for the channel.

The channel aims to bring South Indian attitude to a channel giving music and entertainment for the youth on the same lines as the other music channels that cater more to the North and West of India, with a programme mix of International, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.

SS Music head of sales and marketing Nischal Kumtakar says, "We are extremely delighted to celebrate our third anniversary today. We have come long way from our initial launch and are now rated as the No.1 music channel of South India."

The channel had a complete change in look after a year of its launch and that was received well among the audience which in turn gave a big boost to the viewership. While initially the objective of the channel was to push SS Music as a brand in itself but now, that the brand has been established well, the focus is to compete with the other players and claim the No.1 status.

Kumtakar says, "The high point for SS Music came when the press compared SS Music with MTV and Channel [V] within a year of the launch of the channel. This gave good recognition and boost to the channel and was an achievement by itself. The channel created a new genre of music by being the only multi-lingual music channel in India playing music in English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi."

SS Music bagged the Silver Award for Media Innovations at the Spark 2004 which was held in Chennai recently. This award was given for the highly rated innovative programme Virtual Request. According to Kumtakar, "Virtual Request is one of the first innovative programming initiative of SS Music for all the music lovers in South India. The award is a major boost to the innovative and interactive programming in the channel."

SS Music has major brands like Hero Honda, Nokia, Pepsi, Coke, Sand Piper, Tic Tac, ITC Foods, Motorola, Thomson TV, Harmony, Shaadi.com, Airtel, Cadbury's, J&J Acuvue Lens, Bausch & Lomb, Streetwear, Chennai Silks, Indo Nissan, TTK Healthcare, Bagpiper, TTK Prestige and others, who have started patronising the channel.

Even on the distribution front, the channel has strengthened and has achieved 96 per cent connectivity in South India, with availability of the channel in other parts of the country, which includes Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and other cities.

The ambitious channel plans to grow further by coming up with more events, action packed programmes, awards ceremonies, on ground events, music talent hunt, college festivals, inter collegiate competitions, rock competitions, in the future. The new areas of concentration would be new and interactive programming using video-conferencing, live programmes, SMS based programmes, music quizzes, and much more. By this the channel hopes to give a whole new perspective to the sales and marketing activities which in turn will result in bigger market share.

Kumtakar adds, "The channel has recently completed all the four rounds of its VJ hunt and it was a huge success. It connected very well with the youth audience in the South and we got around 20,000 registrations across all four states. We are all set to launch the new VJs by the end of April, right in time for us to start our new programmes."