If you want to test your local/glocal strategy, Bangalore has to be your testing ground. The city presents a classic cosmopolitan face with a strong local culture. The booming IT/BPO industry has attracted people from all over the country and has made Bangalore what it is today – a city with mixed culture, preferences and of course, chaotic traffic .
Having said that, how much of local element should you add in your product? Do you want to cater to Kannadigas only or the entire audience set (utopian thought, probably!)
FM stations are having a difficult time answering that. Few FM stations are
trying out Kannada + Hindi mix, while few are trying to stay niche by playing selected set only (i.e. pure play, only one language).
Out of the 7 private stations and two of All India Radio in Bangalore, RAM (i.e. Radio Audience Measurement) data reveals that pure play Kannada FM stations comprise 71 % of the market share; and 84 % of Bangalore’s populace prefers Kannada (do you agree with this stat? what’s your preference?)
BigFM has the biggest marketshare, as per RAM data. [source]. Does that mean pure play works?
Challenges with Niche
Advertisers!
Few years back, one of the niche FM stations (was it ‘Go 92.5?’) in Mumbai switched format (from pure english to regular hindi/english mix, much to the agony of listeners) – citing lack of advertisers as the sole reason.
Niche challenge attract niche audience, but most of the advertisers are interested in mass audience.
What do you think? If you were starting a FM channel in Bangalore, what will be your strategy? Where do you see a gap in the current state of things?
Do you think that having a mass appeal music during peak hours (8-10 AM, 6-8PM) and then niche otherwise helps? Could “hindi-only” channel be a good differentiator?
In Bangalore if I want to launch a niche channel ,I will choose a Telugu language only – Enough demographics and Businesses willing to adverstise . Of course I can a slot of English(70%) + Hindi(20%) + other south indian language(10%) say from 11pm to 6am as this period the radio listners are primarily single migrants , BPO and its support staff .
I can ofcourse launch a Tamil channel (demographics)but its politically incorrect to do so in Blore
Devaj – that’s an interesting strategy. But what about
a. the # of Telugus in Bangalore? and how many of them can you target? will you be able to get telugu advertisers as well?
Hi Ashish,
Apparently 30% bangloreans are telugu(Many outskirts and suburbs telugu is the first language, In the city you can get around by speaking telugu without any animosity from anybody whatsoever), Add to it 35% floating population(including college students) which is telugu and many Kanndigas who follow telugu.
In south india regional music apart from classical is purely filmy. Most films are remade from one language to to other with same music tracks.n telugu films are the maximum no of films produced worldwide (more than hollywood or bollywood) n all of them come with music tracks
Addittionaly a lot of business are telugu or telugu oriented. Just look at the restaturants/ furnishings which adverstise andhra style.
Ideally ofcourse you can make the channel 70% telugu , 30% kannada + english + hindi(in that order if you can time it in slots where kannada channels are playing non kannada songs and its not your primetime )
N ofcourse you need to build a community (2.0 fad)
bring in context and personalisation (say you install radio in taxi with mobile phone attached n if u can determine location and can play ads accordingly – Heard this in a MoMo in Mumbai from Relaince team of being implemented in Europe couldnot get any further info thru googling)
I dont know anything about radio business neither am I planning to start one n im not based in blore but just wanted share my thoughts and hence I could have grossly missread the entire thing and due diligence is not robust (My experience of recently spending 3 months in blore came in handy while drawing many assumption / conclusions /causal relationships)
Devraj should come out of his nest
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