94.3 Radio One Kolkata moves to hindi retro

Radio One Kolkata has undergone a change of its programming in Kolkata. The channel will now only play Hindi retro giving listeners the chance to listen to Hindi classics through the day. 

The change in identity followed a research undertaken by the radio channel which suggested that listeners in Kolkata were exposed to a 'mixture of too many kinds of music’ which resulted in all radio stations sounding the same. Listeners also complained that there was no ‘maturity/classiness in spoken content’. This resulted in the change.

Commenting on the change, Anil Machado, national programming head, Radio One, said, "It is about time, format radio replaces generic radio in the Kolkata market. The city’s rich sense of heritage and the fact that some of the best Hindi music has roots in Kolkata helped us reach this decision to be different and pure. The average Kolkata listener expressed displeasure over the lack of intelligence which we have corrected. Listeners also complained of too much jock talk in all stations between the noon to 4 pm time band resulting in a sharp drop of average number of songs per hour in that band."

Vineet Singh Hukmani, managing director, Radio One, added, “As we have maintained, we will be always ‘away from the herd’ and yet reach a sizeable audience in every city we play in. Kolkata is a market where there is tremendous appreciation of the ‘heritage of Hindi retro’ both in mature educated listeners and discerning advertisers looking to reach a quality conscious audience. From the initial response we are confident that this will help our equity grow within the right audience. We have never been interested only in reach. We have always been interested in giving our advertisers the impact they need within a sizeable BUT well profiled audience. This change will bring us very close to almost 2 million listeners in Kolkata and this market being a high TSL market will help us build tremendous loyalty.”