MUMBAI: Big FM’s Delhi station is revamping its content to give its listeners a stress free music and jock talk experience
The station, that has donned a new look this week, has introduced the newly launched â€?Chillax Hits’ concept in the capital, which will play easy to listen, soothing melodious tracks to help people â€?de-stress’. Not the head banging type of music but music that helps people to relax,… says Big FM – Senior Vice President, Programming Nirupam Sonu. We are also playing a lot of soothing 90s music….
Talking about the changes in the Delhi station, he explains, Music that we are playing is easy, soothing and it incorporates music that was produced a decade back. We are playing seven songs back to back in â€?Big seven’. We have also introduced a game show called â€?Bollywood Ka Waaris’ giving out lots of cash prizes to the listeners. Basically music is given the spotlight. We have introduced new RJs and also shuffled the line up of the existing ones….
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The radio jockey space sees churn too, with some new voices inducted and some existing ones shuffled around slots. RJs Pratap and Richa will host the morning slot of 7 am – noon, RJs Jiah and Ramit will entertain with the mid-morning time band of noon- 6 pm, RJ Aparshakti will host the 6 pm – 9 pm slot and Satyakam will be heard from 9 pm – midnight.
Talking about the need for the revamping, Sonu says, It was basically a programming need. With the changing needs of the listeners such change in formats becomes inevitable. One constantly needs to innovate and be in sync with the need of the listeners….
We had undertaken a lot of research before we initiated these changes. The research did point out the need for changes that we are now undertaking. We hired the expertise of an external research agency, Indica research,… he further elaborates.
Radio works on formats. In the research we played melody, upbeat, recent, old tracks all sort of music and tested it on an audience of nearly a thousand people. The preferred music of the audience is what we are going ahead with hence completely focusing on the choice of the listeners,… he says.
When posed with the age old question of why only Bollywood music gets prominent airtime on FM stations, he says, Our listener base mainly wants to listen to Hindi film music. It is only once in a while that a non film album interests the audience. Otherwise, the major chunk of listeners are interested in tuning in to Hindi film music. We do not play anything beyond what the listeners want to plug into….
On being quizzed about the target audience, he says, Our TG is not changing but definitely expanding. We were younger earlier but now over the years, we have a strong listenership base and we want to cater to its needs. We have announced the changes in Delhi and Mumbai to suit the changing needs of our listeners and soon every city will undergo this research and we will make the necessary changes….
Talking about the changing format that some stations are now exploring, Sonu says, We are not planning to change the format as such. If the trend is changing, we will. Currently our format focuses on music….
We use to play Hindi music in the evening slot in Hyderabad but it didn’t seem to work hence we started playing regional music. Every station behaves like a local station and plays local, topical music. Programming differs from city to city adding in more local flavour….
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