Talkathons on air

TRENDS 2006-2007

Licence fees went down, advertising spruced up, foreign investors came in and newer channels entered radio space in 2006.

Even towards the tail-end of 2006, Indian radio managed to stay in the news. While India had a growing number of radio converts, in Bahrain, an Indian radio channel, Voice FM 104.2 was launched formally in November 2006 with programmes offered in Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil. Radio jockeying continued to emerge as a lucrative career option and even Indian films like Lage Raho Munnabhai revelled in the radio spirit.

Going by the trends and figures, one thing's clear: people are straining their ears to listen to the radio. According to a FICCI-Pricewaterhouse

Coopers study, flexible policies coupled with increased participation of private players will spur the Indian radio sector to become a Rs 1,200 crore ($ 267 million) industry by 2010.

The study states that the growth will not only be in major towns, but also in 70 smaller cities with the majority of the population belonging to socio economic classes B, C and D.

The big news of 2006 that will have a major impact in 2007 has been the government's keenness to increase the foreign investment cap in private FM radio to 49 per cent from 20 per cent. Foreign institutional investors will also be permitted to hold their stake up to 49 per cent.

"Foreign companies like BBC and Richard Branson investing in radio is going to be a huge trend of Indian radio 2007," says Simran Kohli, a radio jockey, who even started her first, full-fledged, state-of-the-art radio academy in mid-2006. She also predicts that news and information-based shows on radio will be a major trend of 2007.

The big news in 2006 was the inclusion of new radio channels like Fever 104 FM and BIG 92.7 FM, the latter being the flagship FM channel of Reliance-Adlabs.

With an investment of Rs 400 crore pumped into the radio channel, Big FM 92.7 hopes to extend to 1,000 towns and 50,000 villages to reach 200 million Indians by this year.

Celebrities also realised radio's potential what with Bollywood personalities donning RJs' hats and interviewing their colleagues from the industry. So there were singers like Sonu Niigaam, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shankar Mahadevan and others actively participating in radio programmes on channels like Radio City.

From radio films, to talent-hunt and celeb-driven shows, radio was introducing concepts that went beyond the regular song-and-talk format. Advertising became huge on radio in 2006.

"I tied up for a 10-day advertising campaign for my academy's launch on Big FM. It cost me Rs 4 lakh. A similar campaign on TV would have set me back by Rs 35-40 lakh easily," reasons Kohli.

There will be 40-strong private players as compared to the current seven and the market of Indian radio, as industry experts point out, will see investments worth $1.5 in the next 24 months. Radio advertising, which presently has 2 per cent of the country's total ad-spend, will see a substantial rise over the next 10 years too.

Another key decision was the I&B ministry's decision to bring down the licence fees. While radio channels had to cough Rs 8-10 crore every year as licence fees "" with annual revenue earnings of Rs 12-15 crore, the new licence fees only requires them to pay Rs 40-60 lakh, which 4 per cent of its total revenue earned.

While the government has already issued licences to 336-odd channels in 2006, and is ready to issue licences to 400 more channels by February 2007, Indian radio is only beginning to fine-tune its glowing records.