How days fly especially when you have a schedule to manage
and you are born with lazy bones, if that’s too hard to picture then just
imagine me, I am whole of it. :p alright
it’s time to come up with another post on the blog . So whole lot of happenings
and prominently among them is the Shutting down of a Television Channel, yes
the Indian entertainment channel. “Imagine” was launched by NDTV and later
Turner Corp took it over and brought to us many of the “swamvars”, to be honest
few of us use to look forward to them what if the latest one was that of Veena
Malik we still were looking forward to it.
So all this while we have only heard about the Radio
Channels shutting down their shops, the first of the private radio stations (back
then they were more precisely only radio production houses) had to shut shops
not because they had bad product or had financial trouble running it but thanks
to the Supreme Court. Both Radio Midday and Times FM were asked to vacate the
slots they owned on the state run FM channels and Government was asked to come
up with a policy and hence came the auctioning of FM Radio Licenses. Then the
stations started bleeding, Radio Mirchi shut shop in Pune, Win FM shut shop in
Mumbai, Go 92.5 got ready to shut and numerous other small time players decided
to give up their frequencies. Eventually only 21 out of total of auctioned 37 remained
operational. This brought about a change in the licensing fee structure and with
few other changes came the second round of FM License Auction. This time radio
stations didn’t shut shop in fact Radio Mirchi re- launched their Pune station
and by now Go FM turned into Radio One but they still didn’t stop bleeding. In Phase 2 out of 338 auctioned only 230 got
operational, though few were asked to return their licenses as they ended up
successfully bidding more than 15% of the total licenses which was put up as a
cap. With the third round just about nearby stations are hoping that there be
some crisp guidelines on the Music royalty to be paid by the stations plus
allowing stations to broadcast news and sports. Compare this state with that of
TV Channels, they have no content restriction, you don’t have to go t through
auctioning of the “Frequency” to start broadcasting TV programs, you have a
better product with visuals, you have less operating cost per viewer and high
potential income on the advertising revenue, unlimited viewership and if you
want you can also have subscription fee to cover your distribution costs. And
even then you shut shop! Wow Radio you surely rock the boat much better and in
difficult waters.
Its IPL Season and like flies to the sweets, everyone is
after to suck the nectar, as if there is some. Overnight Radio Jockeys are expected
to become Cricket connoisseur cum soothsayers cum experts and few of them do
become making me feel are they misplaced as RJs or damn cricket is in our blood
and hence being “authority” on it comes so easy!. But then if it’s so common as
in our blood then who is going to listen to them, for everyone including
listeners have it in them. Sorry let me change IPL from being like sweets to
like cleavage branding women, for whom men have to fall to. By the way happy
belated world cleavage day, thanks to Poonam Pandey for letting us know. And yeah I guess I am looking forward to her picking a favorite this season from the IPL lot and the “gift”
which she would send him across.
I happen to tune into radioone Mumbai breakfast show and
immediately realized what’s it with stations having “distorted” mike settings,
first it was prateeka @ Red FM Hyderabad and then just as I ended up preaching
about that I realized my own settings were distorted on my next show and then
came RJ Hrishi’s. Anyway like they say , s*** happens and I better agree to it
since I wasn’t any better but dude at least Hrishi and me are veterans, Hrishi
much more since his was the first voice that went on air on a privatized FM
Stereo on 15th Aug 1993 on 102.6 FM in delhi, mine was 4 years later
becoming the first voice to go on air from Bangalore FM airwaves on 31st
December 1997 on 101.3 FM Metro (back then the station wasn’t even named and
there were no regular shows, this being the only show it would air on an annual
basis as there was a court litigation preventing us from broadcasting
regularly), to be precise it was me and Anita Naidu who went on air together.
Anita Naidu now happens to be the Head Programming of Radio One at Mumbai, the
world seems so small! And if you still have doubts, let me tell you Hrishi and
me studied together at Lucknow Army Public School, with he in the commerce
section and me in sciences. Still think the world isn’t small, alright then me
and Anita Naidu use to listen to the same radio show called “Heartbeat” done by
Deepa Sreekumar at Radio Midday, where we also use to drool over Nikhil
Chinnappa’s radio show, yeah back then he was a RJ, VJing hadn’t happen to him
yet. Aah too much of trivia! time to return to present times.
Well I would call it IPL fever which has displaced Gold FM
from being number 1 in Delhi, after all they don’t air IPL. So Fever FM is
currently Number 1 and in my opinion should remain there until the end of IPL.
Fever is now Number 1 in Delhi with 18.9 % (4th in Mumbai, 5th
in Kolkata and 8th in Bangalore)
of listeners in12+ Category, Gold FM is number 2 with 18.7% (number 3 in
Mumbai and number 9 in Kolkata), Mirchi is number 3 with 15.7% (number 2 in
Mumbai with 15%, also number 2 in Bangalore with 21.8% and number 1 in Kolkata
with 23.2%) RadioCity is Number 4 with 12.4% (RC is number 1 in Mumbai with
15.4%, number 1 also in Bangalore with 25.8%), Red FM is number 5 with 12%,
BigFM is number 6 with 7.8%(Number 3 in Bangalore with 18%, is number 2 in Kolkata with 17%) , Radioone is number 7 with 4.4%, OyeFM is number 8 with
4.2% , Rainbow FM is number 9 with 2.2% and Hits FM is number 10 with 1.9%.
Gold FM’s show aired between 10-11AM is still the country’s number 1 show with
maximum listeners tuning in, a total of 6 Lakhs 53 thousand! Massive figure.
More on Radio sometime soon, keep dropping by and enjoy my latest Hyperabad show in Enclosures :)
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