MUMBAI: Big 92.7 FM Chennai has got itself a facelift. The nine-month old station has revamped its programming content and extended the prime time band for a better share in the listenership pie.

Big FM Chennai station head Zarin Jalil Menon explains, "As a matter of strategy to extend our listenership, we have reshuffled the entire programming line up and introduced fresh content. The new programming line-up is based on the internal research done by our station. It looks into the minute details of `who is listening at what time?`"

Scraping all old shows, the Chennai station has retained only two shows - the breakfast show Big Vanakkam and the late night show Big Choice. These are the two shows which run across all the other Big FM stations. The content of these shows however, are customised to the local flavour of each region.The station has extended the three hour morning prime time to four hours stretching Big Vanakkam from 7 am to 11 am. Considering that the station gets more listeners in the morning, RJ Dheena from the show Speed has been brought as host.

`RJ Dheena is a very popular RJ and has a huge fan following. We wanted to extend this listnership with our popular RJ so we placed him in the morning show," says Menon.

The show Lucky Lakshmi aired from 10 am to 1 am has been replaced with Kollywood Masala from 11 am to 12 pm. The show which is hosted by RJ Yo Yo gives updates on the Tamil film industry. From 12 pm to 3 pm the new programming line-up has the women show Chinna Chinna Asai hosted by RJ Sangeetha. It has scrapped the show Episode 9 to 7 on Tamil serials .

Dhool which airs from 3 pm to 6 pm has been replaced by a youth centric show Imsai Unlimited slotted for 3 pm to 5 pm. The 5 pm to 8 pm slot will dedicated to a fresh programme Overtake which replaces Speed.

Isn`t the station taking a risk of losing the loyal listeners by repalcing its popluar shows? "The new programming content is more focussed now. Each programme is segmented according to the target audience. These focussed shows also fetch us good revenues. For instance an ad on jewellery will be more profitable during the woman`s show and not on a late night show," adds Menon.