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We woke up to the news of Channel V shutting down and being the 80s kid that I am, my heart sank. I thought about all those cool music shows and even cooler VJs, who stopped existing post 90s as music channels started playing TV shows.
The Quint caught up with a few of our favourite Channel V VJs, who shared some of their fondest memories of the channel with us.
VJ Gaurav was one guy other than Purab we girls used to crush on. But I couldn’t believe when he said it has been more than a decade since he left Channel V.
“It's been over a decade since I left Chanel V, but I think it will always be a part of my system because it was such an important part of my creative education. I think at the time when we came in, Channel V was supremely cool. I think a lot of us were brought into just a sort of connect a little more with the Indian youth. We were sort of the kids next door.”
Reliving his old memories, Gaurav shares how the work culture there was and how people were open to experiment with new ideas.
He talks about how the office was also their favourite hangout.
“We had this lakrawala bungalow in Khar, which had a big auto rickshaw on it and it was the Channel V studio. It had half an auto rickshaw glued to the front of the building, it had a dance floor there, it had a cold drink-vending machine. So for us kids you know, we were living alone in Mumbai and we would always end up hanging around in the office. We were all friends and it was so much fun. We would show up on days we didn't even have shoots and suddenly people just put us on stuff. 'I am doing a show, why don't you jump in' and we would just jump into each other’s shows. It really was a party.”
“It was my dream to become a VJ myself and its strange that how finally it did work out and I managed to get my gig at channel V,” reminisces Shruti Seth.
Not to mention when she interviewed Bryan Adams!
Kamal Sidhu was one of the VJs who actually saw Channel V getting launched. She told us about the roof top party which was organised for the launch.
“Channel V came as a surprise and is gone as a surprise. When it first launched, it truly came out of no where. MTV had a three-year contract with Star TV after which they decided to autonomise. As talent on the channel, we were the last to find out. Once it came, it blew everyone away. Channel V came to fill the void and it was put together quite quickly and on the spot. Most of the same team that had been working on MTV stayed back and launched Channel V.”
Time to bid goodbye to Channel V indeed!
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