On Public Demand, Roshan Abbas Shares his Network 18 Memories

This is how TV-18 and Roshan Abbas gave Indian television the first Bollywood countdown show.

TV host Roshan Abbas made his television debut with TV-18. (Photo: The Quint/ Rahul Gupta) 

These were the mid-90s, the early days of cable television in India. People who had grown up on the staple diet of ‘Chitrahaar’ suddenly saw a whole new format of film songs on TV.

This was a brand new bollywood songs countdown show, modelled like the Billboard top 100 show in the US. The show was called ‘Public Demand’ and it came from the TV-18 stable.

TV host, RJ and actor Roshan Abbas started his television career with the show. His co-host was Mahima Chaudhary who went on to become a popular Bollywood actor.

Cover Page of Network 18 - The Audacious Story of a Start-up That Became a Media Empire.

In the book, Network 18 – The Audacious Story of a Start-up That Became a Media Empire, Roshan Abbas shares the experience of his television debut and how at times he used to work for months without getting paid just because TV-18 was like a family to him.

Network 18: The Audacious Story of a Start-up That Became a Media Empire, published by Portfolio Penguin, was launched in September 2016 as a hardback. The paperback edition of the book is now out in bookstores and is also available online.