I was pleasantly surprised when I tuned in yesterday to find one more radio channel. So finally, Bangalore gets one more radio channel, Radio Mirchi at 93.3 MHz.

IMHO, there are too few radio channels on air. Which is strange because it’s such an economical means of communication with a high penetration.

This report analysing the trend of radio in India says, “It is ironical that while India has the second highest penetration of C&S homes in the world, radio has suffered from shunted growth. This can be attributed to misdirected policies by government, which did not give enough prominence to radio as a rich medium for entertainment and also for community development. Recently though, government has liberalized radio broadcast and this has resulted in most media houses diversifying to offer radio services. ”

I am hoping that we will see more niche and specialised stations coming up. There has to be more variety than FM Rainbow or Radio City (and now Radio Mirchi). And it’s quite a pity that Worldspace doesn’t have mobile units. They play some of the best music.

Though that might not go down well with a majority of the population which listens to film songs on radio apparently.

Some statistics from Madison Media Research (also from above link):

1. Radio has a reach of 56% and there is a distinct skew towards males.
2. Radio Mirchi is the most popular station and is tuned by people in SEC A and B.
3. People listen to FM at home (70%), while driving (32%), at public places (9%) and at the office (7%).
4. Almost 51% of the people listen to FM for an average time of one hour and another 39% listen to FM for a longer period of 1-3 hours.
5. Sunday listenership is dramatically low with only 10% of the people tuning in to FM vs. weekdays where the number of tune-ins is as high as 94%.
6. Majority of the people listen to Hindi film songs (63%), followed by Hindi pop (40%), remixes (37%) and English pop (33%).