| MUMBAI:
It's a question radio station have faced far too often in the past. Despite the
numbers, the programming innovations and the high profile RJs radio stations are
missing a 'differentiator' and the audience has caught on. Radio Mirchi Tapas Sen
the moderator of the session on 'Creating Compelling Radio Content' noted that
the disparity in understanding radio content arose from the fact the there is
an insider view and an outsider perspective and the two obviously don't match. "For the person within
the radio station content on radio consists of music, jock talk, stationality
and ad spots. For the average listener though radio content falls in either one
of these ambits – Music and Non Music," he said. Sen also
pointed out that the common perception on the Indian radio waves is that 'talk
is the number one enemy of good radio." Setting the agenda for the session
Sen asked a couple of key questions – Is talk really a bad thing? Is there
really such a thing as too much talk? Or was it just that the talk on Indian radio
is non-interesting and therefore the discontent? In this context,
it was interesting to hear BBC World Service Neil Curry who has been part of various
assignments involving 'news on radio' including the recent BBC World Service initiative
in India . "News and news programming on radio is by far the
most compelling and certainly different from the kind of radio played in India."
He also pointed out the most obvious words used by radio listeners while discussing
a particular content on radio was 'felt' and 'like'. "The radio content needs
to be about emotional connect. In that sense, listener value is the main object
of all programming." Making his case for 'talk' or spoken word as he calls
it Curry was emphatic that talk connected people and worked well given the quality
of such talk. South Asia FM National Coordinator Nisha Narayanan
pointed out that 70 percent of the Delhi radio listeners could not differentiate
between the stations they were listening to. In a market which would soon see
an explosion of private radio players going mass was no longer feasible she admitted.
"It isn't a matter of choice but a matter of force. New entrants will have
to focus on specific genres and carve out a niche both in terms of their target
audience and their positioning." At present the radio players were playing
it safe, not taking risks but such a situation would not grow the ad pie she said.
One of the ways in which a framework could be set for differentiated
programming was to grant licenses based on the kind of programming the radio stations
would agree to do. "Currently radio stations change their programming and
positioning without any warning and the listener is left confused and dissatisfied."
Narayanan also stated that despite obvious misgivings on government policy not
allowing multiple licenses, this was no excuse for not generating differentiated
content. Radio City National Programming Head Vikas Varma agreed that the
larger part of radio content involved Bollywood- music and talk. On a lighter
vein he also noted that, "We are taking our creativity very seriously while
our listeners do not take our content that seriously." Radio in this stage
is largely about entertainment and there must be an effort to get fiction and
drama and maybe even reality shows on air. Sa Re Ga Ma Managing
Director Subroto Chattopadhyay was the only panelist on radio content who actually
did not belong to the industry. However he had some pertinent points to make on
local language radio, kid's radio and even the small town penetration of radio
which was sure to bring on board advertisers like FMCG players and retail operators.
The established players represented on the panel by Radio Mirchi
and Radio City were clear that established players were unlikely to shift out
of their mass position and mass programming so the onus was clearly on the second
round of radio stations emerging in the market. | 
