A couple of times now, my Google Talk status has said 'link love'. All my contacts have at least once pinged me to know whom am I linking up with ;) With equal jest I punch vague answers that blur all possibilities of any further topical discussion. But I smile to myself. For I have just seen the first signs of - what a lot of us are very skeptical about- a Community!

I could build a case for virtual communities and cite several examples even from our very own Orkut. But I’d rather share a live instance that may help validate.

We were recently approached by our friends who run Radio Schizoid, an India based Internet music station that plays trance, for a possible assignment.

Just as an experiment one morning, we linked Schizoid to our respective Google talk status. Consequently, even my Orkut profile was happily advocating- 'Trance @ Radio Schizoid'. Add to that my love for psychedelic art- my profile could have well been of someone from Goa. In a couple of days I get this curiously casual email from Anirudh (no-one I knew then) who called himself a ‘trance addict'. At first I junked the email as yet another random friend request, but I did make a note of the trance bit and checked his profile when next on Orkut.

Meow 104.8 FM's studio glass wall looks into India Today Group's cafeteria. There yesterday, as a guest for a show, I was looking out... thinking about the last time I was there; that was 4 + years ago and my friend, who worked (still does) in the same publishing group, and I were there for a snack. Shamsheer Luthra (I think it was him, been long) was live on Red FM, which Radio Today used to own and run then. It sill looked the same...

Meow 104 Meow 104.8 went live just 2 weeks ago as India's first Just-for-Women Radio Station. There's a mega out-of-home campaign on at the moment and, I would say, sufficient interest in the station (as the search words on my server logs tell me, having written this brief intro on the day they launched). This was validated too by phone calls - during the show, the one before and one after - it is always fascinating to see a new brand being created - the excitement, the learning.

I was there for their evening 5- 6 slot 'Tu Tu Meow Meow' (derived from Tu Tu Mein Mein, which for our non-Hindi speaking readers is the opposite of 'You're ok- I am ok' and simply translated means 'an argument' :) ). It wasn't that bad, though the energetic Ginnie, who hosts the show, did assure the audience from time-to-time that we were indeed arguing most of the time that they were busy listening to the songs (more western popular towards the evenings I was told).

I asked Chhavi, who produces this show, on why didn't they have any male hosts, didn't women want to listen to men? Of course they have a male host, mornings. Hmmm - cool. Want another? I could volunteer!

Exchange4Media updates me us that Meow 104.8 FM from Radio Today (India Today Group) made a bold first-move today with its launch in Delhi. 'Meow 104.8 is India's first talk based radio station for women. Someone broke the clutter finally- phew! Would others follow suit quickly like they tend to do?

I haven't heard the station yet, but plan to eavesdrop evesdrop today. 'Thodi Meethi, Thodi Catty' they promise to be. :)

More radio stuff here.

I haven't been listening to as much FM, as I used to, but have been tracking some general trends etc.

Still predominantly about music (and proudly so, it would appear); some new programming and attempts to differentiate - however, one station starts something new, another follows super quickly (weekly countdowns being a case in point); new favourites are emerging - on my radar are Hits 95 (the most interactive in my opinion), AIR FM Rainbow (old fav), Fever 104 (am I the only one who also addresses it as "Ek so chaar bhukhar!?" :) - this one sounds great, am told they have invested in great equipment) and better believe it - Radio One!

Red FM - Radio Mirchi battle has turned 'Red-Hot', with Mirchi rolling out an extensive "Media planners are asses..." campaign - have they been losing ad. share?

I was thinking about putting up another FM Radio Poll here, but then decided to open a thread and ask readers to contribute with comments. That we can cover stations from across the country and comments can any day capture more than a poll.

Hope too that some from the stations would join in too to share thoughts, announcements and plans.

We are all waiting to hear...

More radio posts here!

A CEO (Boman’s voice?) is addressing the shareholders meet (this is financial results time in real life too). Against all trends from a booming market, the company has made a loss, the CEO informs us, quite pleased with the achievement. But what is this (?) –shareholders are cheering him with a thunderous applause. Even as the news goes from bad to worse, the applause only gets louder.

The CEO sums up the performance by announcing that company has gone bankrupt- shareholders are overjoyed.

Even as I wonder which company is advertising its product, the voice-over reminds us “Mirchi sun-ne wale always khush!”.

Smiled all through the promo- great voice, tremendous surprise value (at least the first time you listen to it).

Mirchi at its irreverent best.

Originally posted on my blogVerbum.

Which among the 8 FM stations in Delhi is your favourite?

I have closed the survey. The numbers are small and for me to publish 'results' would be terribly unfair but a couple of things, however, seem visible:

• AIR FM Rainbow seems to have a good fan following
• For now none of the private stations seem to have dented Radio Mirchi's position
• Hit 95 seems to be getting good traction

Any comments?

Magic appears to be a favourite name with Radio stations!

Delhi now has 8 FM stations. 5 of these sound like they were clones of each other.

Three new stations have launched in Delhi, in quick succession. Hit 95 that came a couple of months ago, New Big 92.7 from Adlabs and Radio One 94.3 were launched last week. My two bits:

Radio Mirchi

Which has been the undoubted leader, for long, has seen a few things change for it recently - star RJ Nitin, moved to Red FM a couple of months ago (he still doesn't sound like he's settled though. Have people actually switched to Red FM to listen to his morning slot would be difficult to say at this moment but a loss for Mirchi nonetheless.

In the short term, the new launches will impact Mirchi most - particularly New Big 92.7 (more about that ahead)

Radio City

Status quo on programming - nothing new after they introduced Mehak in the morning slot and Life ki Dhun, a show with Sonu Nigam sometime ago.

Red FM

Significant gains in the last one year (but):

Had been losing out to Mirchi and Radio City on advertising as: The 'listnership' surveys conducted so far have really taken into account 'brand recall' and not really actual listernership.

And Mirchi had significantly higher recall, as did City. Red suffered on share of advertising coming to it.

However, has got Nitin now (quite a coup), but unless it quickly associates his presence with the brand, an average listener may still associate him with Mirchi and RED may actually 'contribute' to Mirchi's recall. Tricky :)

Has added 'Superhits' to its name in a loose manner - Superhits Red FM 93.5. Great move. Will it bind it tighter, we will see.

Has benefited from these and many other new initiatives (much more advertising support and general buzz), but remains number 3 and now there's new competition to battle.

AIR FM Rainbow

My favourite - varied programming, ranging from music in several genres - western, jazz, western classical, oldies et al, to interesting talks and stuff. Lovely voices, who come prepared (even if sometimes read from a script) and are a delight to listen to. However, not commercially driven.

AIR FM Gold

Infotainment and India -news, analysis, talks, Indian music - film, classical, folk, carnatic etc. - not commercially driven again but channel for the masses - takes feed from AIR I think.

The new players

New Big 92.7

Disappointing launch, I must confess. Some very desperate sounding fillers - one with a duplicate? Amitabh voice playing a taxi driver, and other similar stuff. Nothing new in terms of programming, though my ears popped up at the mention of 'Live coverage' of the upcoming Champions Trophy cricket. Not so much about cricket - I met a top sport journalist friend of mine yesterday and he said that its a great idea. Red too has signed up one of our most flamboyant ex-cricketers - one of my favourites - speaks very well too.

I personally think the opportunity is about 'LIVE' - live concerts and others. Let's see who does it first.

However, given that they have Abhishek and that the so called 'listenership' surveys actually work on brand recall, it is likely to gain in aided recall and that would impact the ad pie.

Also it is an ADAG company after all - they will spend.

Radio One 94.3

Same as New Big, minus Abhishek and ADAG money. Still early days, let's see what they do.

Hit 95

Did they start as Hits 95 or I made a mistake? Anyway, the only private channel that at least sounds different from the rest, even though programming is limited to just music. Some advertising trickling in. SMS your request and they play your song - seems like a day long proposition, unlike specific time slots at which the other stations take requests. I find this nice.

To sum it up - to me none of the private channels even seem interested in differential programming; everyone seems to addressing the lowest common denominator. Song after song, peppered with inane chatter - what about engaging the audience?

Your favourite radio channel! - Take the poll here: (Closed)

I was listening to FM today...

Radio has always thrived on non-traditional & local advertising and one of the prime advertising categories on radio these days, thanks to the continuing boom in the economy, is real estate. There is a constant flurry of ads by builders and land developers, one more obscure than the other, but each claiming to have your and my vishwaas, as if trust was an overnight phenomenon, their right (almost) from the moment these companies were born. It doesn't seem to matter to them that we haven't even heard their names before.

However, an appealing ad 'on air' for the last couple of days is Bank of India's new campaign - the voices are engrossed in an engaging conversation that would usually take place between close friends or relatives, except that one of them eventually turns out to be a banker, from Bank of India, bringing cheerful news (about money of course :) ) to an account holder- Rishton ki Jamaa Poonji. I truly hope it is like this at BoI and that is not just a punchline. My own experience with the banks has been very different and I would happily switch to a bank that invests into relationships - am tired of negligent bankers, intrusive tele-sales agents, recorded voices...

It made me think though - when finalising messaging for clients, the biggest challenge is to identify a true differentiator (What's the offerering? How are we really different? Reasons that the recipient of this information should believe us?). It is an intense exercise and from this is supposed to come the unique promise of a brand. A lot of advertising today seems to just invent a punchline, without much worry about whether the brand really stands for or fulfill the promise?

So just catchy advertising or truly about 'wealth of relationships'? I will have to open an account to find out! Might just :).

I discovered Hits 95.0, per chance, a couple of days ago and speaking to a friend yesterday, told her to tune in too, only to be told by her that her brother works for them :).

The station, in its search for a differentiator, promises 'no talk, no ads, only hit music' (something like that) and the packaging from the on-air promotions sounds that of 'world music' station - they play a mix of Hindi, popular, world music. Mostly Good and I have been telling my friends to tune in...

No talk, no ads? Too good to be true? Seems like that on the face of it. I wonder what the revenue stream is and how long can they sustain like this. Maybe they will get the numbers first and then get on with the ads - good approach too. I know what I would have liked to do - anyway - enjoy the uninterrupted music, while it lasts!

Original post.

My colleague Atul and I were chatting yesterday about the new Radio City RJ, Mehak, who recently took over from the insufferable but, for some reason very popular 'Aage P, Peeche P - Pratap! ("Something quite endearing about the guy, even though he talks a bit much.” I have been told).

While we began on the subject of who made for better (or worse) listening, from among the two, the subject quickly drifted on the why and how of the need to introduce female voices during the morning prime time hours.In my opinion, a couple of years ago, in absence of any clear programming differentiation, and attempts to confuse brand recall with listnership were giving Mirchi an advantage over the 2 other private channels.

RED FM was perhaps finding itself particularly badly hit, with brand presence/ and resultant recall/ perhaps being the lowest. However, it felt that it had equal listenership, but every-time anyone on the street was asked the question about which channel was playing or they played, Mirchi would be the most often quoted brand (who cares about or remembers the frequencies anyway!)Advertisers were flocking to Mirchi.

I grew up watching(but mostly just listening) Komal GB Singh read the 9 p.m. news on Doordarshan. There was this amazing dark-honey like quality of her voice, that made you forget whatever else was happening around you. I still remember when I once called her on the phone, many years after she had given up reading the news, I was so nervous, my hands were shaking.

Cut to today - pick any channel of your choice (do we have a real 'choice' in picking one? The only choice I really exercise is NOT tuning into any of them). But, for academic purpose, let's pick ANY. You can't tell from another, and for good reason I suppose, they are also relaying pretty much the same news, read by untrained, karkash voices who think it is quite ok to call Subzi - Subji or Bazaar - Bajaar. It's quite ok, perhaps, to speak like that on the street...but on a national telecast on a leading, HINDI news channel?

But hey, the worst culprits for me are the private FM stations - the combined cacophony of the music they play AND the voices. RJs are supposed to be like this? But hang on a sec. AIR FM - Rainbow?! Muaaah - Muaaah - Muaaah! Some of the voices there are a different story altogether...but why do they have to read from a script??- I recently listened to one of the regulars on 'Matchless Music Hour', Kiran, read out a list of concoctions, supposed to make you beautiful from the outside and inside, one after another -I promise you - for 5 non-stop minutes! Kiran, I wouldn't have heard or believed any of it, had it not been for the voice! Sigh!

Original post here.