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Tag: Taro W

  • ‘More and more local production is the way forward’ : Bhaskar Dutt – Radio City 91FM – Bangalore VP & station head

    ‘More and more local production is the way forward’ : Bhaskar Dutt – Radio City 91FM – Bangalore VP & station head

    Radio City FM 91, Bangalore launched in July 2001. Promoted by Music Broadcast Private Limited (MBPL), and with 75 per cent equity from GW Capital, Radio City claims to be the first station to use state-of-the-art digital stereo FM.

    Bhaskar Dutt is the VP & station head for Radio City 91FM – Bangalore for the last one year. Dutt has moved around a lot since he left Kolkata in 1984. And believe it or not, Dutt also been the head of the Stryker Howmedica orthopaedic business in India.

    Indiantelevision.com’s Taro W spoke to Dutt to get a low down on Bangalore’s only private FM radio station’s plans.

    Excerpts:

    Could you update us on Radio City Bangalore?
    Though we’ve changed from English to Hindi a few years ago, and our positioning across the country is that of a Hindi music station, what hasn’t changed is that we are back with the high energy hit music that cuts across a big age group. It’s the 15-35 age group that we try and cater to, it cuts across social and economic strata, it’s all pervading. What has changed actually is the language. Given the cosmopolitan character of Bangalore, we let the Jock’s talk in English, unlike Mumbai or Delhi or in Lucknow where the language of the music is Hindi and the jock talk is also in Hindi. Bangalore is the only station in the country where the jock talk is in English.

    Regarding sharing of software with other Radio City stations…
    The programs are generally similar to those on Radio City stations in Mumbai, Delhi and Lucknow, except, as I said earlier, that here the RJs speak in English. The production of some programs like Junior Janab by Roshan Abbas are centralized though. At this point of time there is not too much of sharing of software. We at Radio City think it is better to localise more rather than generalise. That is the way forward – more and more local production.

    “We’ll be bringing back English again, because we find that some of our listeners have a preference for English music. This will probably be in the 9 pm to 12 pm slot. Middle of the road stuff. We won’t be doing hard rock and we wont be doing jazz. Again we want to get the 15 to 35 age crowd to tune in.

    Another demand is for more of Kannada, we have a four-hour slot on Sunday, called the Chow chow bath hosted by Kiran. This is a very popular program. We’ll probably extend that to weekdays also. At present, what we do is that we play some Kannada songs over the week during our regular programs. We’re now toying with the idea of a Kannada slot some time during the day.

    Do you have any rating systems in Bangalore to know how many people will be listening to you?
    Not in Bangalore. In multi-station cities, like Delhi and Mumbai There is an ILT (Indian Listenership Track). I’m sure it will happen here too once a second station comes in.
    You had Kyunki Saas bhi… and Saans in Bangalore, you also had Kahaani… in Mumbai. Why have you discontinued beaming the soundtracks of soaps?
    We’d decided to broadcast an ‘X’ number of episodes, plus it wasn’t live, in the sense people had already seen these episodes on TV. In Bangalore, we decided to do more of the local stuff. For example the Matinee show. We do a lot of local city oriented stuff like Chat on the Mat and Karma Yogi. This is more relevant to Bangalore.

    You have so many public service messages, do you charge for them?
    No we don’t charge for these programs. We also work very closely with the police and not just for traffic. I remember some time back there were rumours about Kannada doyen Rajkumar who was unwell – that he was in a bad shape. I believe rioting had already started in one part of the city. What we did was we contacted the police commissioner to tell people on air that there was nothing seriously wrong and to ask them to maintain peace and calm. We had Rajkumar’s son on air thanking people for their concern and informing people that his father was fine. We worked on a very short notice. Even now, all that the police has to do is give us a call, and we immediately oblige. Sometimes, we ask them if they’d like to go on air and clear matters.

    How are you gearing up for challenges of competition? Radio Mirchi may probably come in next year.
    We welcome that. The category would expand. We’ve created the market. Up to now this has pretty much been our market. What will happen now is that the category would expand, there would be more people sharing, there’d be more value to deliver. There would probably be more scope for experimentation, for all players that is. There would probably be niche programming. Right now we are providing mass entertainment. Depending on how the new bill is passed and with new stations coming in we hope to do some experimentation.

    Currently all stations in India target the 15-35 age group. Do you foresee age-specific stations or focus-specific, having programs targeted towards specific age groups as is the practice in the west? Like stations specifically for the young or the old stations that talk only on cooking…
    No, not in the immediate future. This will happen only if your licensing is friendly to that. In many other countries you have different licensing policies and regimes for different kinds of programming. You have a different licensing policy for non-music programming. We don’t have those kind of policies in India. As long as there is no differentiation in the fee structure based on programs we may not have any such ‘niche’ stations. The viable business model has to accept that.

    How do you market yourselves, increase awareness among people about your presence, bring in new listeners in the city?
    First, quite obviously we broadcast on air. We’re going to have more presence on ground, we’re doing outdoor, billboards, some have already come up. Actually we’ve gone outdoor after a long time. You will see this across the year.

    They’ll be like the Amul hoardings… people would look forward to what comes next. We’ll refresh the hoarding every month.

    We want to have a theme that really identifies us. Right now the theme that has really worked is City Bajao. You see that on our hoardings. It has had such a connect with Radio City. It has sold very well.

    Who does your creative work for these hoardings? Any new themes?
    We work with some local agencies. And a national agency is pitching for us. I think Indiantelevision.com reported that. That’s in the process. Once that happens, we will also have a brand building campaign.

    Your fourth birthday anniversary, could you share some of your celebration plans?
    “We were the first Radio station in the country and are now the first to turn four. We are taking all our shows on ground — In the past we haven’t really done many ground events, so a lot of people don’t know what the jocks look like. So we plan to take every single week day show – Good Morning Bangalore, Matinee Show, Simply Adjust Madi and Route No. 91 with Darius – we’ll be taking all these shows on ground. We’ll go to various places and talk live from there. We’ll definitely increase our on-ground presence.
  • ‘Nobody can beat us on coverage when you compare the money invested by us and our reach’ : R Venkateswarlu – DD Bangalore director : R Lakshminarayan Rao – DD Director (Engineering)

    ‘Nobody can beat us on coverage when you compare the money invested by us and our reach’ : R Venkateswarlu – DD Bangalore director : R Lakshminarayan Rao – DD Director (Engineering)

    Rated as the best maintained DD kendra in 2002 and the best news channel in 2003, DD Bangalore Kendra employs 430 persons on regular basis while another 200 on job basis. The channel nominated by CBA (Commonwealth Broadcasters Association) won the runners up prize for cost-effective engineering in broadcasting at the 2003 International Broadcasters Conference at Amsterdam.

    “Inform Educate and Entertain” is the DD mantra and DD Bangalore Kendra follows it by providing information and news, education, art, cultural and historical programmes. The channel telecasts programmes on investor education, redressal of grievances and promotes minority languages such as Urdu, Tullu, Konkani, Kodavu, Sanskrit and Hindi. DD Bangalore telecasts five hours (3:00 pm to 8:00 pm) on DD1 and the remaining time on DD9 Chandana channel. The programme content is 50 per cent entertainment and 50 per cent public service programmes.

    The broadcaster’s revenue for the last fiscal stood at Rs 150 million. The major sources of income for the channel are ads, sponsorships, spot buys and production. For the fiscal 2004 – 2005 DD Bangalore Kendra projects a growth of 20 per cent to Rs.180 million. The channel claims that it has increased productivity from an average of four to five hours to around 11 hours per day in the last two years.

    DD Kendra Bangalore director R Venkateswarlu and superintending engineer and director (Engineering) R Lakshminarayan Rao spoke to Indiantelevision.com’s Taro W on the channel’s future plans, programming strategy and the DD DTH service DD Direct+.

    Excerpts:

    You have claimed that DD Bangalore Kendra had increased productivity from an average of four to five hours to around 11 hours per day in the last two years. Tell us more about it:

    R Venkateswarlu (RV): We have had to explain to the employees to improve output. We’ve had to get them change their work culture and habits from a laid back type of functioning to that of a corporation. We have tried to get the employees involvement in functioning. The biggest problem has been creating a team spirit. Dr. Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living course has helped us on this. We have even started our popular Chandana channel without any extra staff or expenses. People must be made aware of their responsibilities by placing additional responsibilities on them. This inspires them to perform better.

    Some of our colleagues who have joined private broadcasters say that they are able to meet the demands of their new jobs with greater ease as they have a lot less to do as compared to here, though the job security is not there.

    Please offer your comment on the improvements made by the Kendra on the technical front.

    R Lakshminarayan Rao (RLR): We found that transmission and production were getting mixed up and hence studio time was wasted, productivity was low. We established a separate transmission unit. We have to shuttle between live to tape. We’ve also adopted digital technology in recording, editing and transmission, which has resulted in improved quality, continuity and productivity.

    As opposed to most other broadcasters, our news is telecast live every-time. Most other news channels keep on repeating the same recording again and again. The news that you see on DD Bangalore is broadcast live.

    R Lakshminarayan Rao
    “We’ve also adopted digital technology in recording, editing and transmission, which has resulted in improved quality, continuity and productivity”

    How do you envisage the Kendra’s future? Please comment on the competition prevailing in the broadcast industry?

    RV: There is no question of our competing with anybody. Being a public service provider, 50 per cent of our content is focused on public service. Given a free hand, we can generate revenues at par with any other private broadcaster. Compared to the Rs.150 to 200 million that a private broadcaster spends on programming, we spend only about Rs.10 million.

    Here in the South, the content has to be mainly films and film-related, with a mixture of soaps, drama and modern music. We have to look at it from the social service perspective mainly. We also telecast live events such as the 10-day Brahmotsava celebrations at Tirupati-Tirumala starting this month on 16th that would go on till 25. We’ll be going live from 9 am to 11 am and from 9:30 pm to 11 pm everyday. We do cover live the important religious happenings in and outside Karnataka live. No private channel would spend extensive airtime the way we do, but as a government organisation we have social obligations to fulfill.

    Our 15-minute news programme at 7 pm generally has the highest viewership among all South Indian news channels, private as well as other DD centers as per TAM. Sometimes Asianet, which is a close number two, does get more viewers than us.

    On an analysis, we found that our primetime ratings were weak after 7 pm. Prasar Bharati has permitted us to telecast approximately 270 episodes from 5 September 2004 to 3 March 2005. These will be mainly serials, tele-films, tribal dances and history, and documentaries based on reputable Kannada works and the shows will air on Chandana channel. We will telecast the shows on DD1 at 6.30 pm from Sunday to Thursday and on satellite in the primetime band of 8 pm – 9 pm to match the private satellite channels. On Sunday evening we plan a programme on exclusive classical short stories named ‘Katha Sagar’, while ‘Darpana’ that showcase serials and documentaries will air on weekdays. We are also reviving production of our daily serial ‘Adachane Gagi Kshamisi.

    Eminent literary and film personalities have been contributing to us. We’ve had some of the top producers such as Girish Kaservili, Dr. Chandrashekhar Kambar, and Dr. Baragam Ramchandra. The late G V Iyer made the top serials such as Kadambiri for us. He also made the documentary ‘Natyarani Shantala’. Prema Karanth has made many programmes and recently a children’s’ documentary.

    Nobody can beat us on coverage at present. Also, when you compare the money invested by us and our reach, no one can match such a low cost to the large viewership ratio.
    Reportedly, cable operators have not been providing a good signal for the DD channels. What is your take on this?

    RLR: Cable operators generally aren’t doing justice to our channels. When we get reports of poor quality transmission, or incorrect transmission, we take up the matter with the government and the police department.

    What is your game plan for the DD DTH service titled ‘DD Direct+?

    RLR: We have already installed 1,300 receivers to areas that have poor reception or where the signal is not available at all. Another 200 will be installed by the end of this week. Setting up terrestrial transmitters in the uncovered areas would cost enormously, and the time frame would be 10 to 15 years and also the whole exercise requires good manpower. DTH would cover the rest of the population which do not receive the signal or poor signal quality, and this would be a much cheaper option for them.

    The DD Direct+ package is expected to include 30 channels including 13 private channels, 13 AIR channels. Negotiations are on with private broadcasters for their FTA (Free-to-Air) channels to be included, while from the radio segment 20 radio channels are also likely to join. All types of DTH set-top boxes available in India today can receive DTH+.

    If all DTH service providers could come on a common DTH platform, the viewer would stand to benefit. This would be subject to availability of satellite transponders and willingness on the part of DTH service providers. High-end set top boxes available in Bangalore support two CAM (Conditional Access Module) for two encrypted DTH services. Access would be through as many viewing cards that authorise receiving of the DTH services. That means if the DTH signals of all the broadcasters could be beamed from one satellite, the viewer would require only one dish and maybe one box to see all the programmes. From a subscriber’s point of view, this would be very cost effective. He or she would not have to spend money for buying multiple equipment and dishes. The scope for this is definitely there if there is a consensus among all the broadcasters and a common satellite could be provided.