Non-stop music in Bhubaneshwar

Elisa Patnaik

Harihar Patra, a paan shop owner from Pahala -- a small village squeezed between the bustling twin cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in Orissa -- has been lately affected by an unusual addiction.

Not even a matriculate, Patra just can¿t stop listening to the recently launched 24-hours FM channels in Orissa. The modest FM radio owned by him blasts the latest Bollywood numbers in the shop located on the National Highway-5, and 22-year-old Patra loves every moment of it. ?I don¿t feel bored at all and this is cheap entertainment,? he says pointing to the radio, which he purchased from Cuttack at Rs. 100. ?In fact, when I go home after winding up my work late in the evening, I feel restless as the signal is not very clear inside the village.?

The radio in Orissa, which had been relegated to the background, has now resurfaced with a bang, thanks to the surge of FM channels in the twin cities. With three FM channels already on air, listening to radio is suddenly in. The private FM stations - Reliance Adlabs¿ BIG 92.7 FM, Eastern Media Limited¿s Radio Choklate 104 FM and South Asia FM Limited¿s 93.5 S FM - were recently launched in the State with two more (AIR¿s FM Rainbow and Red FM) to follow suit.

?The market in Orissa is booming and we feel Bhubaneswar is one of the hottest markets in the eastern sector,? says T. P. Dash, Station Head, 93.5 S FM, Bhubaneswar. S (Superhit) FM is the latest to enter the FM channel space in Orissa. ?Nearly 75% of our content is music or music related and at a primary level the station is about non-stop superhit music.? The youth - in the category of 15-35 years - is the biggest target for all the FM channels and they are dishing out an assorted dose of entertainment and information in Oriya, Hindi and dashes of English.

While Big 92.7 FM and S FM have more of Hindi programmes, Orissa-based Radio Choklate has Oriya RJs spewing both Oriya and Hinglish. Although the channels are largely for those in the twin cities, listeners in the neighbouring districts of Khurda, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara can also tune in to the stations. Though the channels have set up their stations at Bhubaneswar, the programmes are broadcast from All India Radio (AIR) tower in Cuttack.

Bhubaneswar is among the modest, yet upcoming cities that FM channel companies seem to be targeting. The Big 92.7 FM channel in Orissa is the 17^th in the series of Adlabs, having already established in relatively smaller cities like Hissar, Jammu, Srinagar, Bikaner, Aligarh, etc. The S FM channel too has procured 45 licenses for establishing their presence in the whole country.

On the other hand, Radio Choklate is the only regional FM channel in Orissa at present and has been strongly emphasizing on its ¿local¿ flavour and fervour. ?Being a local media company for so many years we have more of customized Oriya programmes for our audience in Orissa,? says Monica Nayyar Patnaik, station director, Radio Choklate. Moreover, the youth does not seem to be the only target listeners for this channel, for ?it believes in catering to people within 7-70 years.? The channel has also procured the license to set up a station at Rourkela.

With the FM channels becoming more popular, the demand for radio set has also spiraled. And it¿s no longer the bulky radio set of yesteryears that used to find pride of place in every Oriya household. The sleek, hi-fi radio set that easily slips into one¿s pocket, which till today was an option for those in the bigger metros - has now flooded markets of the twin cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. The cheaper option of Chinese models, in fact, has been fulfilling the rising demand at the base level segment. Mobile phones featuring FM radio, has also become a rage with most of the FM-enabled mobile phone users plugged in to their favourite 24-hours FM channels.

Although the FM channels have augured well for the FM enabled radio and mobile phone companies, the content of both the FM channels have come in for criticism from media watchers in the State. Media critics allege that most of the content are just infotainment and that too related to films, weather and traffic and targeted at the urban youth only.

While it¿s too early to predict the success and failure of FM channels in Orissa, going by the performance of FM channels in other cities of India, it seems the channels here surely cannot remain immune to challenges faced by radio companies elsewhere. While the music royalties that the companies pay are steep, the smaller revenue potential and increasing operating cost compound the problem. Whereas Dash of S FM states that it¿s too early to worry about revenues now, Radio Choklate¿s Monica Nayyar Patnaik claims that ?the advertisement space in their channel is booked for the next one month.?

The novelty of listening to 247 FM radio channels has caught the fancy of listeners in cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack -- but only for the time being. It remains to be seen whether this craze of listening to FM channels will actually result in creating revenues for the radio companies and make it sustainable in the long run.