Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Mirchification of Go 92.5 FM

We've all heard of behenjis turned mod. But now, you have the mod turning behenji. Go 92.5 FM - the only one of 4 private radio stations in Mumbai which played a mix of Hindi and English music - has gone 100% desi.

As the popular old Hindi number goes... Yeh kya hua, kaise hua, kab hua? Aur kyon?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You build a brand for 10 years, a brand that actually had an identity because it was 'different'. Go 92.5 started out playing primarily English music. A couple of years ago they tweaked the station in an attempt to widen the listenership base.

So the RJs switched from playing 'mostly English' to 'a lot of Hindi, peppered with English' and you know what, it worked just fine. The Hindi songs they chose to air were the 'acceptable in a disco' variety - 'Woh Lamhe', A R Rahman, Raghav, Jay Sean, Rabbi Shergill, Kailash Kher.

The chatter was still in English, and different from the chatter on other stations. Jaggu and Tarana in particular excelled at talking about nothing at all and still keeping you entertained. The USP of this duo was they sounded completely at ease with each other, completely natural. Nothing was scripted or staged. The accents weren't put on and neither were the 'personalities'.

Even something as mundane as the 'traffic update' was more interesting because of Jaggu's inane comments which would generally start with, "See, what I don't understand is..."

Jaggu and Tarana reflected the attitude of so many of us who 'think primarily in English'. But, we're no longer enslaved by Western music - many of us prefer all manner of item numbers to the Billboard top 20. Which is why the first shift by Go 92.5 went down all right.

It's like Indians who call themselves 'non-veg'. Except for some of the hard core meat eaters, most are OK with vegetarian food forming 80% of the menu. But the occassional chicken or fish sure brightens up their day.

Go 92.5 gaya...
But now, everything has changed. Some smart alec has studied the market and decreed: "The numbers are in the Hindi market. Hindi gaane hi bajaiye please. Hindi mein hbi baat kijiye please."

The result is a sad and soulless transition from a vibrant station with a small but loyal listener base to a me-too product willing to forgo all its old listeners, in the faint hope of attracting a few new ones.

I realised something had 'changed' when I told my driver, "hamara station laga dijiye" and he said - that's what's playing. And it sounded just like Mirchi!

Bombay Addict has a heartfelt blogpost on the 'makeover':

Eventually, Go also increased its Hindi content... yet, English songs were still played often... Go92.5FM still smoked competition on all counts - quality of music, quality of RJs, everything. You just have to listen to the shrilly, loud, accented RJs of the other stations to appreciate Go. I didn't even waste my time doing that comparison.

Cut to the present. Sometime last week, Tarana started to speak Hindi more than usual and I thought I was hearing a tad too many Hindi songs. And today, Sunday, 9th April, I woke up to "Chura liya hai tumne" instead of T-Man's Old English songs on his Sunday Brunch show. So I'm guessing Go has gone full Hindi.


Yep. Not only do they go "full Hindi" they now run contests where you can win merchandise for films like "Aryan - the Unbreakable" starring Sohail Khan. A film which has flop written all over its brawny forehead.

In fact, the first thing that Go did when it decided to 'change over' was interview Himesh Reshammiya. Nothing wrong with that (I shall need an entire post to do justice to the Himesh phenomenon), except they did one of those 'tussi-great-ho' interviews... where they were so very careful not to 'offend' their super sized ego guest.

Very forced and unnnatural - and that has been the tone of the J & T banter ever since.

For one, Jaggu has limited Hindi capabilities and even Taraana doesn't sound like Taraaana when she talks now. It's like she's translating the voice in her head when she speaks and something is lost in the process.

You know what they say about wannabes... When you see a behenji turned mod, even though she may be wearing the hep brand of jeans and get the hep 1000 buck haircut - you can still tell she's a behenji? Well, it's the same with the mod going the behenji way.

If I want to listen to Mirchi, I'll tune into Mirchi. Or Radio City 91 FM or even Red 93.5. A better strategy might have been to simply steal a couple of star radio jockeys from other stations!

I'm guessing Jaggu & Tarana will soon bow out, like Malini and Glenn have. Maybe Shruti will take over and people like me will carry CDs for 'drive time'. But will ratings drastically rise? I see no reason for Mirchi or City listeners to switch...

And if that is the case, 3 months from now, Go will probably sigh, "We should've stayed true to ourselves". Ab na ghar ke rahe, na ghaat ke.

It's all about money but...
At the end of the day, yes it is about making money, but money can be made out of selling a smaller but more premium audience. English newspapers in India, which have far smaller audiences than regional papers, operate on that principle. There are successful examples on TV as well - CNBC, NDTV but yes, MTV did go behenji and achieve more commercial success.

The need for Go 92.5 to go 'mass' can be traced to the fact that it's recently got a large amount of funding. BBC Worldwide Holdings recently invested Rs 31.8 crores in Radio Midday. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has also invested 10 crores.

So now the station obviously wants to go 'national' and hence made several bids under 'phase 2' of FM licensing. Go now has licenses for Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad and Chennai.

Radio Mirchi has emerged as a successful multi-city radio station model - both in terms of listenership and revenues. But marketing theory and common sense say that challengers to Mirchi cannot adopt the exact same model. Mirchi's strength - and weakness - is its mass base.

As Nisha Narayanan, former Head-Programming of Radio City, Bangalore, observed on exchange4media.com:

When you offer 10 channels in a metro, and four in smaller towns, the only way to survive will be through channel differentiation. Research shows that 70 per cent of listeners can’t differentiate between one FM channel and another based on content. This definitely will have to change...

And it's not like the Bollywood formula will work everywhere:

FM is a local medium and it has to have a local flavour. It’s really not a good thing for the larger networks to go in for the same -- or similar -- content across the country. It may sound like a cheaper option in the short run, but if you don’t talk about local issues in the local idiom, you can’t engage your listeners and you’ll lose their loyalty. You will end up with bland, mass-market cookie cutter programming, which turns people off FM altogether.


I think the original Go formula could have worked in Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and even Delhi. All these cities have a fairly large audience of young people - students and professionals - who would relate to a station that spoke their language and aired more diverse music.

As a friend who works in Radio Mirchi commented on the Go strategy,"In the obsession for greater revenues, they didn't realise they had a winner..."

Ah well. Coke once tried to be a Pepsi and then returned to its original formula. The same just might happen with Go. Until then, they're gone, as far as my patronage is concerned!

P.S. Over 1500 listeners have signed this petition. If you feel strongly, so can you. I don't think anything will change, however, until the ratings come in and there's no significant improvement. Or, advertisers give Go 92.5 a thumbs down!

29 comments:

  1. Brilliant !! Well worded in your usual style and needless to say I agree totally. Thanks a lot for linking me up.

    I think I've realised this is an emotional issue as well. When you're loyal to a radio station for so long and one fine day they just wake up and become like all the others, well..you feel had. I did.

    Yet, this change made me discover what that round thingy on my deck was for. It was for changing the radio station. And with a heavy heart I have learnt to use it...only to hear Heemess-bhai all over again. Dang! not that again !

    Nice post Rashmi.

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  2. Coming from the media myself, even I would say it's a real pity Go had to do what it has. But that's what happens when a financuial guy like Rakesh comes together with a 'major' like the BBC to invest in smaller set ups. They tend to browbeat the small guys in changing everything they stand for, all for the profitable exit in three years.

    I mean, if Hindio is the way out, why didn;t the Beeb switch to a hindi feed, instead of mucking around with their non-existent TRP's? I suspect it is their own walloping in the news space that has convinced them to take it out on GO92.5. Such a pity. To think that car listnership is one of the main measures used to measure radio listnership, and the proportion of English speakers is surely well known among car owners??!!

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  3. FM business headed for some serious competition with big boys with deep pockets entering in the business. Think Adlabs and Sun with pan-Indian presence. Mid-day is a small player (even with BBC stake). May be they are just looking for acquisition by some big fish.

    As for "behenji-fication" of media, Hindi reach is too big to ignore. No wonder you have 2 Hindi business channels and hindi punchline ("Thande ka tadka") for the large phosperic acid brand.

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  4. whooaa!! this is something. A petition against Go going Hindi !! And so many have signed it. Wonder if that is going to stop Go 92.5 from going appealing-to-the-masses like kunal kohli used to say on Zee TV in his movie reviews.

    Anyway, I recall that Red FM used to play some rock. Do they still do that ?? IIRC, Red FM is owned by India today group.

    I remember buying those small Rs 70 chinese no-brand Pen shaped FM radios available outside railway stations in Mumbai, when I was working in Mumbai for bout 2 years - just for GO 92.5 (Yeah, I used ever-so-reliable-and-sturdy Nokia 3310 those days)

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  5. really appreciate you covering this. Hopefully someone there will stand up and take notice. When I was in bbay, where I've grown up, go fm was the ONLY station i'd listen to. Now thats gone. Looks like portable music players are going to do brisk business. I think its time we got our iPods!!

    As for Tarana and Jaggu speaking hindi, i remember when they tried it, it was absolutely hilarious! Cant imagine they have to do it all the time now. WOnt be long before they make their way out.

    Btw, with all this bidding, did bbay get any more stations which can start up the English formula again?

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  6. Sad...It's almost like a phase has passed...just like it happened with MTV (of yore). Go 92.5 used to be a great companion during my stay in Mumbai...

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  7. Radiocity 91FM in Bangalore made a similar move around a year back. They used play a mix of Hindi and English and then changed over to full hindi content. I met somebody from Radiocity who told me it was to do with some market survey results. However, 3 months back they switched to the earlier model and started playing english along with the Hindi stuff. Guess they realised their mistake. 'GO' would probably go the same way.

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  8. You missed out stating GO 92.5 requires atleast 300,000 signatures on that petition for it to revert back to its former avtaar. That probably is the critical mass to sustain the Channel.

    Go 92.5 can have Morning and Evening rush hour band to play Rock/Pop songs. With Bollywood songs swamping the airwaves, it was only a matter of time. Case in point - MTV.

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  9. @ Blah-blah and Amit - MTV took some 7-8 years to realise that there is an audience of people who want English music and that's why they launched VH1 some time back. And guess what - VH1 is also a sponsor of a lot of music events.

    Star TV also went from totally English (remember Santa Barbara?) to totally Hindi. And pulled the plug on Star World. Eventually they also woke up and realised that there is an audience out there for English stuff, and relaunched Star World that now shows top-ranking American TV serials.

    So pointing at MTV going Hindi and saying that they-went-hindi-so-Go-is-also-going-Hindi is all fine. But let's also point out the fact that these firang channels have had to rework their strategy and accept that there is an English-appreciating audience out there.

    I mean, there's a very good chance that the same viewer who sees Everybody Loves Raymond in the night listened to GO on his way back home.

    Now I'm not a marketing guy, but I'm figuring that if the TV channels can understand this, why not radio? None of the current FM radio stations in Bombay ever had the USP of playing English songs. Except Go. And now they've given it up because some fruitcake somewhere relied on an equally fruity survey to reveal that Himesh rocks and English sucks. I hope that Go also realises what the other TV channels took their own sweet time to realise.

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  10. Wow!! this is brilliant analysis. I see the same thing happening to Radio Mirchi & Radio City here in B'lore too. They have RJ's here who speak a mix of English, Hindi & Kannada at the same time. The only problem is nobody in B'lore speaks like that.
    I am not sure what kind of audience they are trying to attract. It's a big turn-off for hardcore English listener base like myself and a vast majority of Bangaloreans. These days I just switch on to my cassette player while driving. Radio is just too irritating with all the ad's and all the fake language combo's one has to put up with.

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  11. ya MTV and V played this tango for sometime
    intially V came on air to give more air time to indian music videos then MTV did a volte face...and so did V, both saw oppurtunities elsewhere...says a lot about consistencies in market researches...MTV though is more successful amongst the masses...wonder if V got what it wanted...

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  12. I would say it is just a matter of time when another radio station will come in to cater to this audience segment. Atleast that's what happened when MTV turned away. Now the only music channel I play is VH1. Yes I know it is owned by MTV. So what, they play what I like :-)

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  13. Recently I auditioned for Radio Mirchi here in Hyderabad, where they asked me to speak in Telugu. My English is better than my Telugu.

    Needless to say the audition was the worst I ever attended. What made me feel better was atleast I wouldn'y have to struggle to be an RJ with a trying-too-hard Telugu accent. And those Radio waves expose a phony pesonality, somehow.

    Anyway, your my daily dish of youthcurry.

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  14. Confused,

    Speaking Hindi (or other Indian Language) - Behenji/Dumb/Uncool

    Speaking English - Modern/Smart/Cool

    I mean why you are confused, this is axiomatic.

    Regards

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  15. I too am hurt by the manner you have disgraced the Hindi speaking and listening population. Okay I too speak, listen and write English, but I have great respect for Hindi. And modernism is not about which language you speak….
    Agreed that the quality of radio channels is degrading day-by-day (But that has nothing to do with ‘English’ or ‘Hindi’)

    Anyways, when it comes to marketing, the majority wins. What comes out from this article is that ‘GO’ earlier strategy was excellent. Just think, if it were and they were making enough, would they look for change……

    A brand definitely needs to differentiate. But if the differentiation makes them a niche player, and the niche market is not big enough to give sufficient dough, then.

    Lets do a rough calculation (very rough, as I don’t have actual figures) –
    Just go around Bombay, and check with the people who are listening to radio (people from all SECs), my guess is you wont find more than 1 of 20 ppl listening ‘Go’. Therefore share of audience ‘Go’ gets 1/20 (my perception – its still an optimistic estimate, actual figure will be even lower)

    Brand loyalty is very low in Radio listeners; especially those who listen radio on their cellphones or pocket radio, they just keep switching channels.
    Lets say six “hindi” radio channels, all of same quality, no differentiation, probability of getting audience 1/6. But since GO would be a new, less preferred player, lets say they get half of their share of audience, that’s 1/12 (against 1/20 by being niche player). - Not Bad.

    I would anyday prefer Star world over Star Plus, Zee Café over Zee Tv and CNBC TV18 over Aaj Tak. But the mistake people like us tend to make is to consider ourselves representing majority of the target audience.
    Star, MTV always knew there was an audience for English stuff, so they started off with English channels. But what they realized later that the audience is not large enough to make good money. That’s when Star Plus and MTV turned ‘Hindi’ to cater to masses. They had capacity, so they could afford one more channel to cater to ‘Niche’ segment – so Star World and VHI could coexist.

    Those of us who are in minority, keep craving for getting marketers attention – be it choice of music, size of readymade outfits, anything
    Only place where minority wins is the Government Policies :-)

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  16. Shilpa - Only place where minority wins is the Government Policies :-)

    @Shilpa - Alas, how true !! Guess we are majority or minority at the wrong place and time.

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  17. Make a point,

    If you do not really understand what "Behenji" implies either you are naive or knave.

    Regards

    PS I never knew about "Ctrl key", it is for wisdom like this that I surf.

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  18. yeah same thing happened here in kolkata with power fm. it used to play only english tracks, but now english songs are very rare. its just the occasional popular international pop song. which sucks by itself anyway.

    anyway, there is one really good solution to the problems of all you mumbai-residents. get yourself worldspace. no advertisements, since it makes money by charging a bit of a rental. the usp is it has 40 different channels - a different channel for every generation. everything you could possibly want. only problem is you cant have it in your car. in case u listen to the radio at home, you cant beat worldspace ka service.

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  19. I don't particularly care for Go issue but was shocked with Rashmi's tone with Bhehenji and Mod word uses. May be thats what youth supposedly believe, and that's why she is just strengthning the stereotypes, being the magazine editor after all, but this is totally in bad taste. And then women say that men don't respect them and look as a object! (Not a justification but something to think about)

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  20. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  21. For the past couple of nights, I am hearing English songs on GO.

    Maybe, they are rethinking on their strategies!!

    Cheers,
    HP

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  22. Thank you Rashmi! I'm very glad that a blog with a higher readership than mine took up this issue. I'd written about it on my blog a while back... but I had not known about the petition!

    Now I have to now go and look at iPod prices, bu till then I can tune in to AIR 107.1 FM Rainbow between five and seven PM. In spite of some *really* painful hosts, they do play good music!

    Thanks again!

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  23. Good Post. But its very disappointing to see less than 2000 people signing the petition in a city of 16 million (where I thought you'd have at least 500 k people like us). May be the marketing jerks at Mid-day are right after all - and we'll have to put up with the Hindi crap they dish out.

    Thank god for my I-pod and I-trip

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  24. holy crap! ... for a minute there I thought the guy in the pic was Patrix!!

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  25. rashmi

    same thing happened in bangalore some time back

    radiocity when launched in bangalore had a healthy mix of indian and international tracks and easily some of the best rj's like Johnzie, priya ganapathi and sheetal iyer.


    they had metal request shows 2 in the morning and they were people like me who used to stay upto 2 just listen to great music

    but all of the sudden they decided to go complete hindi. I threw my radio that day of the office building.

    somewhere around september 2005, they decided that total hindi music was not good enuf for the rock capital of india !!. so they once again introduced english tracks in small doses.

    about radio mirchi, well coming from the house of times of india, who in bangalore rule and know he pulse of the crowd, still play hindi.

    only decent channel there is 101.3 with crappy rj's but good music in super small doses.

    World space and ipod rules !!!

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  26. Are any of these channels available on the internet ?

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  27. its pretty sad to know that one of mumbai's true blue english radio station has slowly going and now completely gone desi, but at the cost of what??

    No clue whatsoever...

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  28. Whoah...this is really sad news....I wasn't much of a radio-listener when I was in Bombay, but whenever I listened it had to be Go, both for the RJs and for the music. Especially the sunday morning brunch was brilliant. But what happened with Radio City in Bangalore seems to have happened to Go in Bombay. Here in Delhi of course the radio, like most other things, is crap...(except for AIR once in a way)...There should be WorldSpace receivers for cars coming out soon...once that happens then you can say bye-bye to these rubbish FM stations.

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