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Has
television killed the radio star in India?
Marginally, if the National Readership Survey 2002 is to
be believed. While urban radio reach has dipped from 27
million homes to 24 million homes in the last three years,
rural radio reach has taken a lesser beating - standing
at 30 million homes today as against 31 million homes in
1999.
Private FM players can however take heart at the thought
that the decline has not been in the top eight metros in
the country, but instead in the smaller one to five lakh
population towns. As a matter of fact, among the 48 million
adults who listened to radio in the last three months, 31
per cent or 15 million tune on to any FM station - an increase
of six per cent since 2001. While the audience base of radio
listeners widens, the AIR primary audience base has decreased
from 48 per cent to 42 per cent in the last three years,
says the survey.
NRS monitored audiences during January and March 2002, during
which Bangalore noted an increase of 15 per cent in radio
listenership, while Lucknow detected a 20 per cent increase.
But it is the smaller cities like Jaipur and Vishakhapatnam,
apart from Pune and Ahmedabad which have recorded a stupendous
increase in radio listenership. The typical radio listener,
says the survey, is a male (15-24 year old) from the SEC
A and B categories, mostly a student (21 per cent) or a
young executive (19 per cent), reads English publications
- particularly sports and business magazines, is addicted
to the Net (13 per cent) and loves to watch Channel V and
MTV. He prefers his own set of wheels, owns an upmarket
house, a PC and of course, a cell phone.
NRS also studied his listening habits and found that places
like Lucknow even switch on FM during TV prime time hours.
The average tuning time stays at two hours in the morning,
and ditto in the evening, the study notes. NRS 2002, which
also tracked the changing face of the 'urban gharwali',
noted that while her radio consumption has gone down from
71 to 64 minutes, her access to FM has shot up from the
earlier 19 per cent to 25 per cent.
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