It Radio is the flavour of the month. Why not? Three hundred and thirty seven stations are up for grabs – perhaps the largest ever in the world at any given point of time. Everyone in the industry – and outside – is excited about the emergence of this “new” media. But there’s one concern which almost everyone has: is the market large enough for so many stations? Actually, an even bigger concern is: won’t all stations sound the same? This apprehension is even graver in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, cities which are going to have 10 or more stations each.

These concerns, however, will be dispelled if one understands the process followed by radio stations to decide the programming strategy and format, which can be fairly simple at one level and highly sophisticated at another.

All these years what we have heard on Vividh Bharti and during the early stages of FM privatization from 1993 to 1999 was the presenter/producer/station head deciding what to play on what show. If Yuri visited a music shop one evening and bought a new CD, he would play a track from it on his show the next day, hoping that many would like his choice. There was no scheduling, no automation, no traffic management. Ads would sometimes get forgotten or left out, and one would have whoever presenting whatever show on whichever day – isn’t that how AIR stations still sound?

Things changed a little in 2001 when the FM Phase I stations went on air. There was an effort to have a focus. But till date most stations continue to appeal to an audience between the ages of 7 and 70, so you have a 60s Lata number followed by the latest chartbusting Sunidhi Chauhan number.

All this, however, is set to change.

What we are going to see now is that any given station will have a clearly defined core target audience – the people at the heart of its market, who are most likely to become station loyalists (there are other, different listeners around this core, but clarity of positioning means treating these as secondary priorities). What each station is going to aim at is the “mind share” of the target audience. India with its vast cultural and geographical diversity will naturally offer a lot of options to these prospective players.

Every significant aspect of the core market would be known and understood – lifestyles, attitudes, and of course music preferences. Most stations would undertake continuous research to help define the tastes of the listener, and Programme Directors would use this as a constant stream of insight for their planning.

All this knowledge would determine how a station sounds. What track it plays, how often, and during what part of the day would be decided by a Music Scheduling Software – an RCS, a PowerGold or an Enco – and, all this off a hard disc. The station would need to have a music policy which would provide the operative framework for all these decisions. This ‘station sound’ would then determine the on- air-personalities, the station identity, the announcements, topics for call-ins, and even the commercials. (Many stations in the US do not accept pre-recorded commercials that do not reinforce their station sound.)

Market potential and audience research will play a major role in defining the format of the station. The first step would involve identifying the potential audience, analyzing them, conducting the gap analysis, and finally, mapping the distribution.

The main aim of designing the format, and further fine-tuning it would be to put listeners into a comfortable listening mode which they can identify with; along with maintaining consistency throughout the broadcast day. This would ensure low tune-out rate, increase loyalty, and further broaden the listening base.

The stations could look for a format for mass appeal or can cater to a niche audience. The designing of the format would involve an insight into the lifestyle of the target audiences, understanding their preferences and attitudes. The focus of stations would be to attract the audiences who are the primary decision-makers or it could target just the influencer, however, most of them would ideally like to capture the major share of the pie of the powerful buying group, which has the major purchasing power.

Beyond programming
As stations become more targeted they would also evolve into strong and distinctive brands, and they would deliberately cultivate their brand values in all their on-air and off-air activities – events, contests, helplines, etc. Once the brand values are established, advertisers could leverage them to give a positive effect to their own messages. Of course, one would need to be very careful at this stage in choosing the right format, as frequent format changes would be expensive and risky.

So, in any given geographical area, there will be differences between the stations available – sometimes the differences could be wide (e.g., talk vs music), sometimes narrower (e.g., Current Hits vs Recent Hits). Metros would tend to have a wider range of formats. For example, Mumbai Radio Market may look like:



Most areas will have at least six different stations to choose from -- including All India Radio. So the audience for any given station will tend to be relatively loyal, as they have selected the station that is most appealing to them.

Implications for advertisers
Different station formats attract different types of listener. Since the format has been extensively researched to cater to the preference and the lifestyle of the target audience, advertisers can effectively harness this power. This also means that advertising can be very accurately targeted to the relevant audience, and wastage is minimized.

This is as if to set off a chain reaction, since the kind of advertisement being aired on a station would also effect the sound of the station and vice versa.

What more could the listeners -- or, for that matter, the advertisers -- ask for?

(Sunil Kumar is Managing Director, Big River Radio (India) Private Limited, a consulting firm specialising in setting up and management of radio stations across the world.)