‘Philips Top Ten’ and ‘BPL Oye’

‘Philips Top Ten’
Channel: Zee TV
Years: 1993 to 1999
Hosts: Sonal Dabral, Satish Shah, (various)

© Zee Entertainment
Courtesy: Zeshaan Ejaz

Philips Top Ten was a countdown show of film songs based on weekly sales of audio cassettes and later on CDs. Sonal Dabral was the first host. He left the show soon after a few episodes, though he did well in his short stint. He was a humorous host who sometimes spoke in a Bhojpuri accent. Satish Shah succeeded him; his tenure was longer than Dabral’s. He hosted an episode with the pro-wrestler “Macho Man” Randy Savage as a special guest during WWE’s (known as WWF at that time) tour of India.

In 1994 there was an interesting battle for the number one slot between two popular songs of the time “Ek ladki ko dekha to aiasa laga” and “Tu cheez badi hai mast mast”, with each song alternating between number one and two from time to time. In the last quarter of the year, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun’s album held the coveted spot for roughly six or seven months and was probably dethroned by the 1995 album Raja. Philips Top Ten also had guest hosts from time to time from film actors to singers including Raveena Tandon. It also had a theme song, a sort of a jingle, which was something like this: Number paanch, number char....  gaana number one — Philips Top Ten. (Followed by a musical beat.)

Sometime in 1996 the show’s format changed with the arrival of Pankaj Kapoor and Satish Kaushik as Titu and Tony respectively. It became a mini-sitcom with little emphasis on the countdown songs and more on story-telling. The character’s names were later changed to Nitu and Noni and instead of turbans they had to wear hats following objections from “hurt sentiments” organisations. Regardless of the protests, the show went on; Pankaj Kapoor and Satish Kaushik’s characters became iconic. The show became so popular that they could have turned it into a full-fledged sitcom without the countdown format.

‘BPL Oye’
Earlier known as Oye MTV
Channel: MTV
VJ: Ruby Bhatia, Raageshwari.
Years: around 1993 to unknown.

It started as Oye MTV and was later renamed to BPL Oye by which it became better known in the popular culture. It started around the same time as Philips Top Ten. Instead it was a top-20 countdown show, one-hour long; being from a music channel, the stress was obviously on songs. The song numbers were displayed by beautifully creative videos showing diverse facets of Indian rural and city life.

The VJ, Ruby Bhatia, would also do interviews of people on the streets, asking them questions or opinions on various things. At the end of 1994, they did a multi-hour special covering the top-50 songs of the year, also including interviews of listeners, asking them facetious questions. Like Philips Top Ten, Ek ladi ko dekha and Tu cheez badi hai mast mast took turns for the number-one spot. In one segment, Ruby Bhatia asked people which song they preferred. The response was divided in favour of both songs. One person was asked to sing Ek ladki ko dekha song and he made a mess of the lyrics: Ek ladki ko dekha to aisa laga, ek khilta gulab, ek khilti gulab... That’s all he kept crooning. Raageshwari also hosted the show after Ruby Bhatia. It’s unknown if there was any other VJ apart from the two.

It’s slated on IMDB (an extremely unreliable source for Indian television) that Neelam Kothari was also the VJ but there’s no truth to that. Neelam indeed hosted a music show in 1996 (Ooh La La) but that show was on Star Plus. (She is shown as an MTV video jockey in the movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai but that’s only in the story.)

Trivia: To counter stiff competition from satellite channels, Doordarshan started its own countdown show Superhit Muqabala which also included private albums. At the end of a particular year, they gave themselves an award for the best TV channel of the year.