NEW DELHI: All India Radio is working towards making its music programming more balanced, following the results of a viewer research carried out by the public broadcaster.

The survey findings revealed that only two of the twelve western music programmes had listenership of more than 1.1%. All the ten other programmes had up to 1.1% listenership with four programmes recording zero listenership.

However, AIR director general LD Mandloi told Radioandmusic.com that the survey report had recommended a reduction in western music leadership which had zero or less than one per cent listenership, but AIR will not completely cut down on western music programmes. He described reports of drastic reduction in western music in the AIR FM channels, as baseless speculation.

He stressed that AIR would ‘rationalize the programming’ but not reduce the broadcast of any genre of music. He also said that the findings were being scrutinized by a Committee headed by the Additional Director General.

Mandloi also admitted that western music listenership had been coming down but he attributed this to alternate platforms like ipads and YouTube. He stressed on the fact that some areas had a very high listenership for western music, including the Northeast and West Bengal.

The survey was carried out by AIR’s own Audience Research Unit in collaboration with the private agency Adfactors. The radio listenership survey was conducted from 17-23 January in the National Capital Region. It covered 742 FM household radio households with 10 random samples from each urban ward in NCR.