Red hot chilly:

Radio Mirchi (RM), a welcome entrant to Bangalore's music-starved skies was featured in TOI today. The article, tucked away in page 3 of the main paper, basically said that within 1 week of official launch, the radio station had a listnership of 33% compared to the locally bred Radio City (RC) at 21%. The results were gathered from a 240-sample cartrack survey which involved asking drivers of cars at traffic lights about the station they were listening to at the time. The survey was conducted by IMRB and sponsored by...Radio Mirchi! Isn't that 'sakkath haat magaa' ?!? So, much for the article.

Anyway, there can be several reasons for this rise is popularity. One, the station itself is new (locally) and there is definitely going to be a sampling stage, where people are try to check out the 'hot'ness (sic) claimed by the station. You cannot base your survey on the data collected in this period only. Secondly, the station also comes well timed in mid-summer when people are always looking for something new to cool them down; a hot channel included. But there are some things that set RM away from RC that we're are used to listening through awfully dragging urban driving and traffic jams.One, it has a very local touch. A lot of RJ-ing is in Kannada, a move welcomed by locals who have to crave to listen to Kannada on a Hinglish radio channel that has been RC. Also, Kannada was introduced on mostly because of some demands made in RCs infancy. The quality of 'sound' (a less significant factor) on RM was superior I found with the same settings on the equaliser of my car radio. The mix of songs is also pretty nice, but one misses English songs on RM.

But I guess that is where RM stops on the favor scale. RC is way mature when it comes to concepts built around RJs that have become more familiar to Bangaloreans than their own neighbours. Sunaina, Darius, Rohit J and Barker and others have adapted well to the local tastes. Not only has RC well tuned their program schedule to match the vagaries of a Bangalore day, it also has introduced programs to give fillip to the local talent, which can be found in abundance. Compare the night time program schedules- RC has an all-international rollout after 9 in the evening as against an-all-Hindi-oldies broadcast on RM. Personally, I am not into the latter after a long day and a dinner.

RM has immature RJs, as they seem to have, taken the term 'youth' literally by
inducting green RJs who talk like they are talking only to school and college kids and also people with low wit. RM's RJ script seems to be a bit immaturish - what with the 3-hour-long tele-call-in themes on 'ways to kill mosquitoes', 'ways to talk your way out when busted copying at an exam' etc. That their fetish on mosquitoes only invited stupid responses is a an ode to RMs imagination.(I did not switch on 93.3 that evening).Long way to go before people of Bangalore are convinced that RM is' all about 'More Dhak Dhak, Less Bak Bak' (their toungue-in-cheek claim).

RCs till my preferred channel though I'd rather not end up with two similar channels. It may take sometime before genre-specific channels come up. Right now they cannot be sustained (unless paid, like Worldspace), especially since the local demand is greater for regional (read Kannada and Hindi) and Indy-pop-bhangra-etc Bollywood-type music.

Nevertheless, the need for more FM channels and more competition among Bangalore's two main channels is 'sakkath haat' right now.