MUMBAI: Having established itself as a successful talk based radio station over the years, Chennai Live is now innovating by taking the format of talk based shows to a new level. The station has collaborated with a global organization TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) to air a popular talk series titled ‘TED Radio Hour’.

TED Radio Hour is a special series curated for NPR (National Public Radio) in USA, and is now being brought to Indian listeners for the first time. Commencing from 1 April, the show will air an episode every Monday from 8-9am with a repeat on Wednesday between 11am-12pm.

The curated episodes are being sourced directly from the organization and the set of 40 episodes will run for a year. The series will feature talk themes like ‘The Future of Cities’, ‘Building a Better Classroom’ and ‘Do We Need Humans?’ amongst others. The 52 minute segment will be free of advertisements and music, with the only ad breaks being aired four minutes before and after the show.

Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, Chennai Live COO Prem Kumar said, “We always aim to have cutting edge content as our positioning in the market is not music based but talk based. TED talk goes with the ethos of the station as the talks are not geographically specific. The talk series has a total of 50 talented speakers and features Indian speakers as well. TED Radio Hour will present some of the world’s best ideas by people who are redefining the future. The content is sure to be very engaging and we expect a high level of stickiness.”

Apart from that, the station also has plans to launch the second season of its property Vodafone Voice of Chennai with the operator, and also has plans to sell its shows by seasons to rope in large number of advertisers.

As innovations in content emerge as the new aspect for radio players to explore, most advertisers and brands now are less focused towards regular FCT’s. Brands now demand value, integrations and customized programs surrounding their philosophy. As a result, radio players are creating content and specific properties to cater to the advertisers and grow their share.

Chennai Live did the same with its unique properties like Vodafone Voice of Chennai, You Are Hired giving career advice and Universal Livewire that pitched RJ aspirants against one another.

“Today brands want such properties and thus we have got into the concept of selling shows by seasons. Its part of our future strategy as it works well with the advertisers and the listeners, therefore adding value to the station,” Kumar added.

The move is indeed bringing in positive results for the station which has witnessed a 45 per cent growth in advertising revenue as compared to last year. The growth adds more value is the network consists of a fairly larger share of local advertisers as compared to national.

He stated, “Our ratio of local to national is 75-25 which is opposite to that of national to local. We are aggressively targeting local advertisers because our competition is print and not other radio stations, since we are an English channel.”

But even as advertising opens up to radio, the medium has in turn become a jukebox today. While it should be used to inform and not just entertain people, the market has been following the standard template of music mixed with basic jock talk.

“Most radio players are following the model as a herd, while we have proved that talk based content shows. The philosophy that people will tune out if there is no music is not true. We as a station have a good balance of both. You can’t just add value by playing some music and we knew this could be the true differentiator for us,” he commented.

Moreover with Phase III opening up newer opportunities for the industry, the expansion will grow radio revenue and multiple licensing will enable newer formats to open up and offer more content.

Being a part of a larger conglomerate Muthoot Group, Chennai Live states they are not in a hurry to expand into other markets, and aim to establish their content properly.

He stated, “Being a part of a big group, it is trying to get into other mediums like print and TV as well. At a later stage we will also expand into other cities through acquisitions, partnerships and more.”