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Tag: Babbar Sher

  • Radio City tickles with ‘Komedy Ka King Kong’

    Radio City tickles with ‘Komedy Ka King Kong’

    MUMBAI: Radio City is airing a new comedy show – Komedy Ka King Kong.

    The show, which started on 26 December, is a rib-ticking bonanza that will spice up the lives of its listeners with a daily dose from Monday to Saturday at 8 PM

    With lighthearted and hilarious comic routines, the network says it will showcase the finest and most humorous performances of 32 comedians selected from the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Lucknow.

    In order to make it an interactive, listeners may participate in this show by calling and leaving their jokes on an IVRS (interactive voice response system) activated number through the ‘listener contest’, informs an official release.

    Komedy King Kong is hosted by the popular standup comedian Vinay Pathak, and he will also be judging the preliminary rounds of the show.

    The final verdict rests with the junta as they would judge the semifinal and the final rounds through SMS voting. The grand winner of the search would be crowned Komedy Ka King Kong and would get a a lifetime opportunity to host the comedy show.

    Says Radio City head of programming Vikas Verma, “Radio City is the only FM radio station in India providing a dedicated comedy show. Komedy Ka King Kong is another addition to our bouquet of comedy programmes like Babbar Sher, Popat, & Tadka Trailor, which have been appreciated by our listeners. Komedy Ka King Kong, with its daily dose of wit and spoofs, will provide the much-needed relief to the otherwise routine and hectic lives of our listeners. The comic performances will go a long way in entertaining our listeners with bouts of laughter and leave them asking for more.”

  • ‘Differentiated programming’ helps Radio City score in ORG Marg study

    ‘Differentiated programming’ helps Radio City score in ORG Marg study

    MUMBAI: Radio City has reason to feel satisfied with the latest wave of AC Nielsen ORG Marg study on radio listenership in Mumbai.

    The study, done every two months, has been putting Radio City on top of the heap since June 2003, approximately the time when the radio station started putting out what it terms ‘differentiated programming’. The first phase kicked off with eight vignette shows like Pareshan Hoon Main, Rollywood, Babbar Sher and Shanta Bai, all aimed at tickling the funny bone, all of which commenced airing on 2 June.

    In November, the channel followed up the act with the launch of 16 new shows, covering family drama, humour, action, mystery, suspense, horror and infotainment shows, besides regular broadcast of Hindi Bollywood music. These included radio adaptations of sibling Star Plus’s soaps like Saans and Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. The ploy has worked, according to Sumantra Dutta, who says the shows essentially tapped into the 28 to 30 per cent of total listenership which regularly tunes in during the forenoon and afternoon.

    Emboldened, Radio City now intends to launch shows in a new genre, details of which Dutta is loath to reveal, though he says, the station will stick to its agenda of producing new shows every quarter. While rivals have been insisting that differentiated programming may not work on FM stations, which are essentially music stations, Dutta begs to differ.

    The station has been trying its hand at broadcasting live events, beginning with the airing of the Indian Telly Awards 2003, the latest being the Grammys awards yesterday. The listener response has been tremendous, says Dutta, who is happy with the ‘slick and smart’ presentation of such awards for the first time on Indian radio.

    “Radio has made it to the media plan of most advertisers. It now needs to come to a stage where planners will use radio stations selectively, also bringing in an element of accountability.” Currently, Radio City has 220 brands in its kitty. FM radio listenership in Mumbai has shown an increasingly upward trend, with the latest study pegging it at 52,70,000, while average time spent listening to FM radio is 147 minutes.

  • Radio City to launch eight new shows next week

    MUMBAI: It could be the last desperate push before the curtains fall. Or it could prove to be the turning point private radio in the country is hoping for. The Star backed and Mittals’ MBPL promoted Radio City 91 FM today announced a clutch of eight new Hindi programming initiatives aimed at engaging the listener and wooing the advertiser.
    (Lto R) COO Sumantra Dutta, CEO John Catlett and MBPL director Ashok Khinvasara at the Radio City press briefing on Wednesday in Mumbai
    Beginning 2 June, the new shows, a mix of humour, satire and Bollywood, will be interspersed with the day’s programming, with the avowed objective of building a unique differentiator among radio stations and to pump in some high energy content, according to Star India’s radio division COO Sumantra Dutta. Needless to add, the shows also aim at making radio, thus far perceived as a music churner, into a respectable medium and to create a sense of high value at no cost.


    Shows like the weekly Pareshan Hoon Main will have a stereotypical moronic character speaking his heart out on the bothersome aspects of his life in his inimitable style, while Rollywood, a one hour show, will have spoofs on famous and hit Bollywood flicks representated through satire. The other humorous features to launch the same day include Public City (voices of the common Mumbaikar) at 8 am daily, Santa Banta Pvt Ltd (non stop jokes) at 8.30 am, Babbar Sher (verses that tickle, not necessarily edify) at 9 am and Kya Baat Kar Raha Hai (astounding facts coupled with public reactions) at 9.30 am. Also in the pipeline are Popat (a leg puller show) at 10 am every Wednesday and Shanta Bai (household tips), daily at 1 pm.
    The shows, to be rolled out in a phased manner in all four cities where Radio City operates and caters to an claimed 38 million listeners, will help create a large number of trials and offer a cost effective quality advertising opportunity for local businesses, says Dutta. A massive television, radio, press and outdoor campaign will roll out from 2 June to push the shows that will be repeated several times during the course of a day. 
    According to independent research conducted by Radio City, over 95 per cent of the radio listenership emanates at home and is not necessarily confined to the home bound housewife, says Dutta. While the Radio City inhouse team has been responsible for ideating on the new shows, all of them have been outsourced, he says. The ratio of music and non music programming however, is not likely to change much despite the new shows, says Dutta as most of them, apart from two shows, are of the vignette variety and will be interspersed with music.
    Star India’s Radio Division CEO John Catlett too, feels that the shows were a need of the times. “It was a need to create programming that we own, in between the music we play that is not our own,” he avers. While Catlett does not expect large numbers of listeners to tune in specifically for the new shows, the blocks do identify slots that advertisers can use to target specific kind of audiences.