AIR signals in wave of profit, gearing up for hard sell

AIR is slowly waking up to competition from a new crop of private players. In a couple of months, more than a dozen FM radio stations would have sprung up across 19 cities in India. The new kids are spewing a different lingo and they are also talking money.

As for AIR, it is difficult to talk money, and some of the officials with more than 20 years of service are just about getting used to hard sell. As an official puts it, ‘‘We have to go by the image of Public Service Broadcaster and chasing money somehow seems contradictory.’’

Yet competition is being acknowledged. In Bangalore for instance, AIR officials took to the roads in an effort to popularise its programmes and content (A road show by AIR was unthinkable a few years ago).

Bangalore even has a market cell and though its services are common to both DD and radio, the latter’s importance is not being undermined.

‘‘Bangalore is a problem, with competition from Radio City (of Star). But we offer competitive rates on our platform,’’ says Deputy Director General, AIR, Rugmini.

As compared to private radio channels, AIR FM charges between Rs 400 and 800 for a 10-second commercial in the non-prime time and prime time slots. Officials say it’s because of the pricing that the advertisement revenues are coming in.

‘‘AIR’s rate card is sacrosanct. Moreover, there is no threat as media planners are discovering that private players who set real high standards at the time of their launches really have little to differentiate themselves from AIR’s FM channels,’’ says Gopinath Menon of TBWA/Anthem.

It’s because of the success of FM (currently in operation in nine metros and yielding nearly Rs 20-odd crores) that FM2 was launched in Delhi, Chennai Mumbai, and Kolkata six months ago.

With over 70 per cent devoted to news and current affairs (the original plan of having a 24-hour news and current affairs channel was abandoned), the rest to music, FM2 hasn’t exactly set the market on fire. But officials are keeping their fingers crossed.

AIR is also looking at money from private FM broadcasters in Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai who will be hooking up AIR’s transmission towers for 10 years. AIR will be charging Rs 25 lakh per broadcaster annually, increased by 2.5 per cent each year.