Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The new radio city

We have a new FM radio station in Bangalore, Fever 104. These guys are not exactly new and have been around for 2-3 months now, but they have been pretty low key when compared to their competitors. This is strange considering the niche market that every station is trying to acquire. Also, the big name behind this station is Virgin who are a old name in the music game and should know that they need to woo the market, at least initially, even if they do present good music.



They have a very consistent format unlike other radio stations and this is probably what makes them unique. They play 40 minutes of non-stop, ad-free music every hour and then pepper in a few ads in the next 20 minutes. The Bangalore arm of the station is headed by erstwhile radio city RJ Darius and has some other ex-radio city RJs like Fiona and Rohit Jayakaran pitching in. Their song selection though is very much like radio city, trying to play the most "popular" songs in Bollywood and International tracks, though the ratio is almost 1:1. I have not heard a single Kannada song being played, which I think is bold. I did hear an RJ late in the night speak a few Kannada words though. :-)



As of now, I prefer Fever 104 to radio city simply because they play better music with lesser Ads. Sunaina Lal not being around didn't help radio city's cause either. But an annoying thing about Fever is their non-conformance to standard(if there is one). There is some funda of radio station frequencies ending with an odd number, at least in the US there is. In Bangalore too, we have:

1. Radio Mirchi - 98.3

2. Radio One - 94.3

3. Surya FM - 93.5

4. Big FM - 92.7

5. Radio Indigo - 91.9



Radio city started of as 91.0 and changed not so long ago to 91.1. This being said, why did Fever start off with 104.0 ?? I just bought a Car CD/FM player from the US and I know that will not support even ending frequencies. :-( Now, do I upgrade or wait for Fever to upgrade?





1 comment:

Cas said...

Nice one on the Radio stations.... Incidently Radio Indigo and Fever 104 were channels of worldspace. They are trying to regionalise em now....