As a radio player in India, HT isn’t up there in terms of scale, if you look at Big FM with some 40 plus stations, Radio Mirchi with more than 32 stations and Sun Network with again 40 plus stations. In retrospect, do you think you chose the wrong local partner?

Absolutely not. We would rather be number one or number two—preferably number one—in four of the biggest cities, than be scattered all over the country because it takes the same amount of heavy lifting to run a small station as it does a big one. When you think about it, if we were to take a position of dominance in Delhi and Mumbai, do you think anybody is going to ignore us when they looked at the most important radio players in the country? They are not. In the UK, Capital Radio, which is an iconic radio station, has only ever been in London, for 30 years. But nobody ignores capital radio when you talk about radio in the UK. So in our view, we would rather be big in Delhi and Mumbai.

When you came in 2007, you said radio is a Rs300 crore medium today and it will be double that in 2010 and by 2012, it will attract 8-9% of total ad spends. Today we are in 2009, are we on our way to achieving those targets?

Well the objective is to achieve that but even if the market has slowed down, you can look to take a bigger chunk of the smaller pie. So if the market that has been growing at 20% year on year-on-year, slows down to say 5 or 7 per cent, then I guess the challenge for us is to take a bigger chunk of the smaller pie.

The 7-8% of the ad pie figure is pretty much a standard benchmark in most mature radio markets. So coming off a very low base, if we are now going to 3%, may be 7% is still achievable in another three years.

But apart from the economic slowdown, there is also a problem with the way radio is being sold here. There seems to be some serious rate attrition here, and it’s not helping anybody.
When we first came here and we were talking to HT, the market was going year after year at 20%, it was unbelievable growth. Now of course that has changed but that hasn’t deterred us.

If there is rate attrition among even top players, then would you admit that India hasn’t, both advertisers and listeners—taken to radio as eagerly as the radio players hoped they would, at the beginning to this whole radio boom?

Yeah, I would admit that. But I wouldn’t blame the advertisers for that. I think much of the responsibility is on the radio industry itself, collectively. May be they are not marketing themselves well. There is a huge disparity between the stations that charge a high ad rate and stations that sell really cheap. Radio also has a tendency to devalue itself—that is also a bit of a global trend. So all this and the economic slowdown probably would mean that we won’t get to where we thought we would, but I won’t blame the advertiser for that.

Can you point out two of the biggest mistakes India’s radio industry is making?

I always felt that the radio industry is selling its air time too cheaply. But the trouble is, if you try to break that mould on your own, you may not make any headway. And I also wonder about the value of the ten-second commercial, which is a very common thing in this country, to an advertiser. Commercials should be at least thirty seconds. Ten second spots as a unit of ad sales is almost entirely unique to India and it’s doing a disservice to the medium.

Can you imagine all the advertisers in a newspaper, advertising only in classifieds? In ten seconds, you can barely get the brand name and the tag line across. If you want to put your phone number or your web address, there is no time left. How do you convey your brand message in ten seconds? It’s devaluing the medium.

Radio players in India never seem to agree with the listenership numbers. What are the issues with listenership metrics?

We don’t disagree. We are sometimes surprised by it, and sometimes disappointed. But we accept it as the umpire and we go with it.

I do however believe that the sample size is too small. I also think that the weekly reporting is flawed. I think there can’t be any trends in weekly reporting. It’s too up and down. It’s not good for business either. As an advertiser, I don’t think i want a bunch of radio guys running around in my office every week with latest rating numbers. It’s too much information. It should be monthly rating, with a bigger sampling.

News is not allowed on FM radio currently. Do you think this is a hindrance to wider level of adoption of the medium?

I think news on radio would bring more adults and it would also bring in a wider listenership, yes. I was actually very surprised when we first came on here and learned that news was not allowed. I have not seen so many news channels on TV anywhere in the world.

If you put radio aside, India is probably one of the most vibrant countries in terms of talk and debate. If you put on TV, debate is all there is. The obvious question then is, what happened to radio? What is possibly the rationale behind this (the ban)? I’m not talking about profanity or religious zealots on radio, but just spirited, open and lively debate. The other thing about talk radio is that people listen in for longer periods of time and it generates a lot of revenue. And most companies that are involved in radio in India are primarily news companies, be it HT or the Times of India. Could there be better people to create news-related content?