Radio One goes 100% Hindi retro in Kolkata

A study brought out that Kolkata listeners were unhappy that there was no “maturity of classiness in the spoken content”. The new format is aimed at differentiating the radio station

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | April 10, 2012

Close on the heels of its differentiated Hindi play in Kannada-dominated Bangalore and the 'international play' in Mumbai and Delhi where Hindi stations are a dime a dozen, 94.3 Radio One Kolkata has gone 100 per cent Hindi retro, becoming the only radio station in the City of Joy to give listeners the greatest Hindi classic hits format right through the day.

The station had conducted an in-depth research wherein it emerged that most listeners in Kolkata were exposed to a “mixture of too many kinds of music” which resulted in all radio stations sounding the same. Also, listeners complained that there was no “maturity /classiness in spoken content”. So, the change addresses these problems.

A pure Hindi retro music format, and intelligent spoken content for an educated audience makes it the only 100 per cent retro Hindi station in the city. The Kolkata market has a herd of nine similar sounding stations. With this change Radio One once again aims to stand out from the clutter so as to offer the advertiser a well-profiled audience not possible on any other radio station.

Anil Machado, National Programming Head, Radio One, said, “It is about time format radio replaces generic radio in the Kolkata market. The city's rich sense of heritage and the fact that some of the best Hindi music has roots in Kolkata helped us reach this decision to be different and pure. The average Kolkata listener expressed displeasure over the lack of intelligence which we have corrected. Listeners also complained of too much jock talk in all stations between the 12 noon and 4 PM time band resulting in a sharp drop of average number of songs per hour in that band.”

Vineet Singh Hukmani, MD, Radio One, said, “As we have maintained, we will be always away from the herd and yet reach a sizeable audience in every city we play in. Kolkata is a market where there is tremendous appreciation of the 'heritage of Hindi retro', both in terms of mature, educated listeners and discerning advertisers looking to reach a quality conscious audience. From the initial response we are confident that this will help our equity grow within the right audience. We have never been interested only in reach. We have always been interested in giving our advertisers the impact they need within a sizeable but well-profiled audience. This change will bring us very close to almost 2 million listeners in Kolkata, and this market being a high TSL market, will help us build tremendous loyalty.”

Radio One is a joint venture between Next Media Works and BBC Worldwide. It has radio stations in the seven metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Pune.

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