Radio One goes the " ReBoOt " way !!!

Radio as a medium has always been fascinating me since childhood. I remember those days when my mom used to work at Churchgate and she used to take me to her office many times. That was the time when I spotted local vendors selling small FM Radio sets other than the normal stuffs, the portable ones which run on A4 Batteries. At that time, Radio City 91 FM (Now Radio City 91.1 FM) had an aggressive campaign going on in the city about its latest offering " Babbar Sher ". Everywhere I could see colourful posters, hoardings, umbrellas and there were ads on TV too. Out of curiosity, I forced mom to buy me a Radio set and I was completely glued to it all the time, may be because of which I am a Radio addict now. Mumbai had a few stations at that time which mostly played Hindi songs only. But there was only one station which played English songs 24*7 and it was " Go 92.5 FM " (Now Radio One FM 94.3).

" Radio One current Logo (couldn't find the original Go Fm's logo) "

Lets have a look at the transition and changes that Radio One went through over all these years. Radio one was launched as "Radio Mid-Day" in the year 1997 by "Mid-Day Ltd". Initially it used to play a mix of Hindi and English music and its only competitor was Millennium owned "Win 94.6 FM" and a little bit of AIR's "FM Rainbow" which had dedicated AM and PM slots for English music. Later on Radio Mid Day Re-Branded itself as "GO 92.5 FM" where 92.5 meant the Office working hours of 9 to 5 and it switched completely to English music making it the only station in Mumbai to broadcast English songs 24*7. Go 92.5 FM became an instant hit amongst the college going youth and "RJ Jaggu and Tarana" were the show stoppers for the station connecting instantly with the listeners. 

" RJ Jaggu and Tarana"

Go 92.5 FM had created for itself a special listener ship base, though not as much as in the Hindi music segment , but it still appealed to its listeners a lot. Go92.5 FM still smoked competition on all counts. But later on in the year 2006, on June 8th, Go 92.5 FM decided to turn into a complete Hindi Music station and Re-Branded itself as " Radio One FM 92.5" with the tag line "Masti Fataafat". It was very much obvious that Go 92.5 FM's listener ship was lost as there was now no Radio station playing English music 24*7. Win 94.6 FM had shut shop due to licensing issues and the only option left was AIR's 107.1 FM Rainbow. A listener wrote in one of the forums when Go FM Re-Branded " 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." Later on Radio One had to shift to a new frequency of 94.3 MHz in all cities(except in Ahmedabad where it broadcasts on 95 MHz because My FM broadcasts on 94.3 MHz) due to ADAG's 92.7 BIG FM entering the FM business.

Since then Radio One broadcasted only Hindi music content until now in the month of February 2012, Next Media Works (Formerly Mid-Day ltd) in a joint venture with BBC Worldwide again Re-positioned itself as a 24*7 English Music station in Mumbai and Delhi delivering purely International content. All present Rj's were replaced with new ones suiting the stations new genre. A post on the Internet read "An English FM radio station in Mumbai and Delhi may add a fair deal of differentiation in music, but what remains to be seen is how advertiser-friendly it will be, given that listener ship levels are lower than those playing just Hindi music." When Fever 104 FM was launched in Mumbai, it played a mix of English and Hindi content but later on switched completely to Hindi music content due to less listener ship for English content. This creates a dilemma whether Radio One with its continuous genre shift will be able to survive in the market with huge competitors like ENIL's Radio Mirchi, Red FM and Radio City. If RAM Ratings are to be considered, Radio one is placed at the 8th position sharing space with Oye 104.8 FM in most of the cities which isn't a very good spot to be. It would be interesting to see how Radio One differentiates content amongst the english loving audience and whether it will be able to stick to its genre or switch back to Hindi once again. Way to go Radio One !!!