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The DayAfter
Launched with Rupees Five Hundred
Painting the Portal to Mizoram High Price of Environmental Pollution Power: The Infrastructure Muddle |
| Media Pulse | |
| FM Radio’s Booming But Who’s Listening? | |
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The major problem the surveyors face is, of course, that for a medium that is just a few months old, listeners are still in the experimenting stage. They are most likely to surf all the FM channels (only five in Mumbai now) for various periods. They will not have had sufficient time to fix on particular programmes or radio channels, unlike the satellite TV channels which are nearly two decades old allowing listeners to develop firm preferences for particular programmes or channels. As far as FM radio is concerned, not everybody even knows the names of the five channels yet. However, according to the National Readership Survey which vets radio listenership also, radio audiences are a loyal lot which, however, means that since AIR dominated the airwaves, they had nowhere else to go. As more and more FM stations come on line (they are bound to) listeners will have increasing choices. While old AIR loyalists may or may not migrate to the FM stations, the latter’s new listeners are expected to decide on their preferences much more quickly than the TV audiences. The survey companies are expecting listener patterns to settle by November and their reports should, therefore, be out by the end of this year. The FM channel promoters, on their part, also expect a much quicker audience pattern to develop than has happened for TV. On their part, they are trying to broaden FM radio’s appeal as it, presently, is perceived as a medium meant exclusively for youth. Programming, they feel, should span the spectrum of society and be strategically timed to coincide with the time preferences of various sections such as young people, housewives, wage earners and retired persons. They are drawing a lesson from TV where proliferating channels have demolished viewer loyalty and the ad spend is being spread thinner and thinner. FM station promoters’ planning also emphasises not trying to compete with TV, which is an altogether separate medium; radio has to complement TV in programming and time slots and not try to take it head on. The initial craze for FM stations has heartened the promoters and they are ensuring that they will be able to sustain the growth momentum through their strategy. And, equally significant, they feel that they must not make the mistake of attempting to convert TV viewers to radio but must promote radio as a different brand altogether. It is expected that the listener surveys presently being conducted will, largely, support this reading of the future market for FM radio. What is awaited is data which will enable the radio stations to fine tune their programmes to niche audiences at different time slots and thus provide media planners with an appropriate tool to decide where best their ad spend on radio goes. That the ad spend will be there is being taken for granted both by media planners and the radio stations. The question remains: how much, where and in which time slots. The answer is expected to be provided by the audience surveys. Till then we can make our own guesses. So, who’s listening to FM radio? |
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The low price, according to media observers, is likely to lead to turbulence in the Hindi current affairs market. The reaction of the competition is being eagerly awaited. If nothing else, it should be very interesting. Alok Mehta, editor of the Hindi daily, Dainik Bhaskar has been appointed editor of the Hindi weekly. The 64-page all colour Hindi Outlook will have its individual identity, with only about 20 per cent content drawn from the English Outlook. Says Alok Mehta: "The Hindi Outlook is a serious attempt to fill the void created by the closure of Ravivar, Maya, Saptahik Hindustan, Hindi Sunday Mail and Sunday Observer." The new weekly will focus on the Hindi belt. "Our effort will be to make the magazine more Hindi reader friendly. Besides politics and the economy, we will cover literature, health and lifestyle and social issues. Investigative stories will be another hallmark of the magazine that will truly mirror the aspiration of the Hindi readers," adds Mehta, who brings with him rich experience of working with reputed weeklies, Saptahik Hindustan from the Hindustan Times group and Dinaman from The Times of India group. |
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India Today’s Business Group to Launch Smart Inc IF proof were needed that the business of business in India is booming, one need look no further than the launch of the new business magazine, Smart Inc., by the country’s most savvy and upmarket media publishers—Living Media, responsible for publishing a gamut of slick periodicals, the most famous, of course, being its flagship, India Today. Smart Inc., a monthly, is due to be launched towards the end of July and is aimed at the business heads and senior officers of the corporate sector whose job it is to keep the profit levels of their organisations at the highest possible level. Smart Inc. has named its potential market the ‘CXO’ group, obviously referring to the corporate sector’s penchant of naming their top management members ‘Chief Officers’ of various functional groups. According to the India Today Business Group announcement, the new monthly is meant to give support to technology based decision-making, leaning heavily on the ‘how to’ aspect and providing a database of concise, focused and pertinent data to facilitate the achievement of business goals. It is priced at Rs. 100. According to the publisher of the Business Group of the India Today Group, it has been planning for the launch of this new magazine for over a year and decided that the present time was most opportune in view of the all-round indications that the Indian economy is in the recovery mode. Edited by Hari Menon, the new magazine boasts of a team of professional editorial consultants. Backed by the Living Media Group which has numerous brands to its credit, Smart Inc. is being eagerly awaited by the Indian business and industry circles. |
