Stunning growth

In director Alfonso Cuaron&’s award-winning movie Gravity, an engineer played by Sandra Bullock is asked by co-star George Clooney, an astronaut on his final expedition, which radio station she would listen to the most when she was down on earth. Dr Ryan (Bullock) replies, “I don’t know, any one of them as long as they don’t talk too much!” She was obviously referring to the irritating and constant chat of Radio Jockeys who are given to speaking too much. On a lighter note, one can claim that clearly the problem of RJs talking too much is universal and not just limited to India&’s cities.

Considering that 13 February 2016 was declared World Radio Day by Unesco and celebrated worldwide, it&’s time to take stock of how the radio industry is faring in India — financially, culturally and politically. Speaking to a cross-section of industry experts and those who monitor the media as an industry, one realises that the medium of radio, which could really have taken off in a culturally diverse country like ours and climbed great heights, has actually not done too well despite privatisation and a free-run given to private radio players to expand in smaller towns.

If you compare radio with the telecom or television industry, you realise that radio is lagging far behind in terms of growth, popularity and robustness. After around 23 years of existence and the setting up of stations across the country in big or small cities, the FM radio industry&’s overall pie nationally remains just around Rs 550 crore, while some recent start-ups have crossed the Rs 1,500-crore mark in just over 24 months!

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One of the biggest hurdles the FM radio industry in India faces is the government&’s restrictive policies. The talk about private FM channels to broadcast news has been on for over a decade and the previous government had cleared the idea in principle but it has yet to be implemented. Unless private players are allowed to broadcast news and features, they would be unable to bring variety to their content. The UPA government dragged its feet in allowing major expansion of FM content into the news sphere and the hope now is that the NDA government may be coming out with a policy that will help this sector.

The other contentious issue is that of licence fees. Private FM radio broadcasters have been demanding a revenue sharing model whereas the government insists on a one-time 10-year licence fee at the entry point itself.

Apart from government policy restrictions and financial constraints, most media analysts believe FM&’s limited growth is also because of poor quality content and failure of radio stations to recognise what is desired by a particular audience in terms of city-specific requirements.

In many tradition-loving cities of the country (Pune, Chennai) private FM channels constantly play only party music with Punjabi lyrics all day. This is coupled with over-the-board chats by RJs who sound like teenagers wanting to constantly joke about everything in the world. They even go to the extent of ridiculing their own consumers in call-in shows.

In most Indian cities today, large sections of the audience are mature and well-educated and may be looking for content-related to technology or sports updates or for information on subjects like health and fitness. None of this is ever provided and frivolous party music, coupled with Bollywood gossip, seems to be the order of the day.

The other issue most listeners complain about is monotony. Nearly every FM station sounds the same. Content is similar and is sorely lacking in variety. Nobody plays Western or Hindustani classical or folk songs and ghazals. It is the same set of party songs that one is forced to listen to all day long.

India has tremendous linguistic and cultural diversity. This means the markets are perfect for locally run brands in private FM stations. While TV goes national or regional, it can never carry the local flavour and this leaves a large space for FM radio, which can do wonders for city markets. But bad policy, poor content and creative bankruptcy have resulted in FM stations not thinking beyond Bollywood and that has put a cap on the growth of FM radio in India.

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