The Hindu : Front Page : FM channels make waves

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 15, 2008
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FM channels make waves

Satyasundar Barik

They have captured the imagination of younger generation

FM channels have become a big hit among city dwellers.

BHUBANESWAR: A year ago when private FM radio channels were launched in a non-metro city like Bhubaneswar, a lot of apprehensions were raised as to if the new medium of entertainment could attract listeners.

But putting doubts to rest, the FM channels have not only brought a major change in entertainment space of people living in and around the capital city, but they are also getting prepared for a showdown in relatively smaller towns.

The private FM stations - Reliance Adlabs’ BIG 92.7 FM, Eastern Media Limited’s Radio Choklate 104 FM and South Asia FM Limited’s 93.5 S FM have already hit the air of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and a few other urban centres. Two more FM channels are likely to be launched soon.

Youth in the category of 15-35 years have become the biggest target for all these FM channels while the medium has been Hindi, Oriya and sometimes English.

While Orissa-based Choklate 104 FM has been concentrating more on Oriya songs, Adlab’s Big FM, which completed one year on Monday, has relied on Hindi sons. The synchronisation among the national network has helped BIG FM and 93.5 FM.

“This has been unexpected success for us. We had in our mind that people would take time to get educated about the private FM channels, but the way they have responded to us, it could be termed as a spectacular achievement,” Director of Radio Choklate Monica Nayyar Patnaik said.

She said her company had already launched second FM channel in Rourkela and was prepared to venture into smaller cities as soon as they would get the licence.

Ads go up

Similarly, Public Relations Head of Big 92.7 FM, Sudhir Mishra, said the success could be gauged from the fact that the flow of advertisements had gone up dramatically. “We have also started to receive government advertisements. Being the cheapest medium, people of the twin cities accepted us well,” he said.

Before foraying into the market, FM channels had done fair bit of research on taste of people and subsequently programmed the music accordingly.

The popularity of the FM Radio is visible. Local markets have been piled up with sleek radio sets and cheaper models to meet the rising demand of these channels. Ramesh Biswal, a cell phone shop owner, said the first question he receives from a customer that whether certain mobile set has any in-built radio system, which was not heard of two years ago.

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