MUMBAI: Gwalior based FM station, Radio Chaska 95 FM plans to introduce English music content as a part of its programming soon.

Confirms Radio Chaska executive director Tarun Goyal, "Gwalior is shaping up as an educational hub with an audience for English songs now. However, our English music content would constitute only two per cent of the total, besides the Bollywood and Punjabi numbers. Apart from these, we even play devotional content from 5 to 7 am and have garnered many listeners and advertisers in this slot." The station plans to play English content in the night slots in a fortnight.

Radio Chaska has been involved in many outdoor brand activations in the city, which also hosts other FM players like Big FM, My FM and Lemon FM. "Brand activations help us to generate revenues and the popularity gained by RJs in the process is commendable. Visibility gained by on ground events helps us to connect with the audience and develops an instant brand recall value which further turns into brand loyalty."

Radio Chaska has also introduced a certified Radio Jockeying course. RJ aspirants are trained by Chaska RJs themselves who go on air and have been earlier trained by professionals. "Normally, when students learn RJing from institutes they lack practical knowledge due to lack of working experience in a radio station. Here at Radio Chaska, the learners work with the schedulers, RJs, scriptwriters and gain a first hand experience of creating and transmitting of programmes on air.

The students also stand a chance to get a job as a jockey with Radio Chaska itself. "The first batch of the RJing course will finish the course in a month and we would be enrolling some of them in Radio Chaska. It is a good way to discover manpower and also contributes to our income," quips Goyal.

Radio Chaska will complete one year of operations on 4 August. Talking about the year gone by, Goyal says, "It is still challenging to get advertising revenue for radio stations not because other players are making money but it is difficult to sell radio as an advertising medium. If there are many radio players fighting for ads, it creates healthy competition in the market but its acceptability as a advertising medium is a slow process."

"This year has been good in terms of learning where we learnt a lot about the intricacies involved in the radio industry, but in the year ahead, we would be looking forward to monetising the medium in a huge way. Also, it would work in favour of the smaller stations if the royalty rates are scaled down," adds Goyal.