Jagran Prakashan consolidates radio biz

Under Radio City, brand will add 8 stations as Radio Mantra bouquet is consolidated into City brand

Starting Monday, the two radio station brands under the Jagran Prakashan Group -– Radio City (acquired through the acquisition of Music Broadcast) and Radio Mantra (part of the radio business under the Jagran promoters) will be consolidated under the former brand.

Integration on the operations and advertising sales side has been on for a year. Now, the brand consolidation is to be made effective.

With this, the Radio City umbrella expands to 39 stations in the country, as the parent brand acquires eight stations under the Mantra banner. Music Broadcast was one of the key entities in radio that did not participate in the recently concluded Batch-2 auctions of FM Radio phase-3. 

With this consolidation, the Radio City network expands its presence into some key north Indian markets — Agra, Bareilly, Gorakhpur, Hisar, Karnal, Ranchi, Jalandhar, Varanasi and Faizabad. Some of these (like Karnal) were up for grabs in the Batch-2 auctions as well. 

Radio has been growing at a robust pace compared to other traditional media platforms like print and television. Abraham Thomas, chief executive of Radio City, believes this is the right time to leverage advertiser interest in radio with the value a network like his could offer. “Increasingly, local and national advertisers are recognising the power and efficiency (in terms of returns on investment) of radio. Since the biggest advantage of radio is that it provides great local presence, our brand philosophy is that we are the best radio station for your city. So, instead of a top-down approach of being a national brand present in various cities, we have taken a bottom-up approach. That is, to say we are a bunch of local radio stations that make a national brand called Radio City.” 

Their brand positioning is ‘Raag Raag Mein Daude City’ (implying the radio station exists in the veins of the city it operates in). This underlines a commitment to hyperlocalising the content and programming of individual city stations. Having identified various drivers that attract listenership in different cities, the stations are programmed accordingly. So, while Mumbai might drive listenership through music, Delhi could be more of RJ (radio jockey) talk. The programming of these stations will be done accordingly. 

“For the bigger cities, we are now looking at the concept of micro-cities. This means we will focus on specific areas within the metros and give relevant information regarding those. This adds to the localising factor and makes the content more relevant for listeners,” adds Thomas. 

With this consolidation, Radio City can also expand the scope of its various on-ground properties to the newly added markets. While inventory rates and volumes are on the rise for radio companies, they do realise that sellable air-time is eventually limited. And, have developed on-ground properties which provide content differentiation in terms of programming and a wider advertising vehicle for brands associating with these properties. 

“We are building tent-pole properties which will eventually be present year-round. Currently, we have the Radio City Freedom Awards (for independent artists), Radio City Super Singer (singing talent hunt, specific to the city) and Gig-City (a live concert for radio). The Freedom Awards have been on for four years now and this year it will be televised through Channel [V]. We want to expand our listener base in terms of width and depth, and these properties help with the latter,” says Thomas. 

For Radio City, these events are also a good way to generate advertising revenue, as they add two layers of media, television and on-ground. For local brands, on-ground visibility coupled with radio and/or TV presence is a good media vehicle. Thomas is confident that monetising these properties will lead to further growth in the radio sector.