MUMBAI: After frequent changes in its radio networks across the country, Radio One has now announced that it has become 100% tamil request station in Chennai.
The station has adopted a pure hit request format, involving friendly spoken content for an educated audience making it the only 100 % request station in the city. The playlist of the radio station will now be decided by the listeners alone.
The station conducted a research wherein it emerged that most listeners in Chennai were exposed to very little music on FM radio as the talk content was huge and irrelevant. The talk was duplicated with most FM stations talking about the same content creating fatigue in the listeners. This coupled with listeners complaining that ‘their kind of music’ was very limited. Listeners also complained of FM radio ‘talking down to listeners and not being relevant enough to an educated audience in the manner in which the spoken content was delivered .
Radio One national programming head Anil Machado said, “It’s time to bring back the listeners music interests to the forefront of FM radio in Chennai. The driving insight is people want to feel this is ‘their FM station.so we have become 100% friendly and allow requests all day long coupled with spoken content which is friendly and tailor made for an educated audience… Once again bringing in clear format radio in place of hazy generic radio.”
Radio One MD Vineet Singh Hukmani said, “The Chennai market is extremely knowledgeable about the tamil music around them. By making our format 100% hit request controlled by the listener, we will be away from the herd as promised in each of our markets. Already local and national advertisers have been hugely involved with the change and are able to see their brands in this ‘co-created’ environment. They need a well profiled educated listener which no other radio station targets, and this listener demands higher service levels so to speak and we have addressed this by providing them control over the station playout and content.”
Radio One has transformed itself into 100% international radio station in Mumbai and Delhi, along with hindi play in Bangalore and retro hindi station in Kolkata.