93.5 RED FM steals the show at IRF 2015; wins 15 awards

The awards won by RED FM include Best Breakfast Programme (Hindi and Tamil), RJ of the Year (Tamil and Marathi), and Best FM Station among others.

RED FM won awards in all four categories of talent, programming, advertising and, promotions and marketing.

This year, IRF celebrated a decade of unifying key radio and media players across the nation and saw all the major radio and media players come together at The Westin Gurgaon, New Delhi. The one-day forum presented the latest developments in Indian radio industry along with discussions on the present and future of the industry followed by The Excellence in Radio Awards.

Nisha Narayanan, COO, RED FM delivered the welcome note at the event. While greeting all the guests, Ms Narayanan said, “FM radio Industry is evolving fast in India. In this scenario, we need various platforms like IRF which not only celebrates the best of creativity, talent and content but also instils a very strong sense of belongingness in a community which otherwise can be fragmented because of the hyper-local nature of industry.”

Describing the present scenario of the private radio industry in India, she added, “We were around 1000 crore market, 5 years ago and are likely to close this year (2015) around 1800-1900 cr and 3300 cr by 2018 as per KPMG which is definitely a leap. However, radio’s share of pie will remain only around 3.5-4.5% which means a lot needs to be done in comparison to developed markets where radio commands good over 10% share of ad pie. With beginning of Phase III, I am sure our industry will keep on growing to reach to the next level. While expanding the operations in new cities, we will have to focus on brand building to secure new avenues of revenue in the existing markets as well.”

During the forum, the discussions with learned panellists and radio professionals put light on the future of radio in Phase 3 – the challenges, the concepts, the strategies and the technology to bring radio into the 21st century and beyond. Other subjects of the panel discussion included importance of writing in radio, value of radio as a communication medium, brand building, marketing and changing landscape of advertising.

The session on ‘The Role of Story Telling’ witnessed opinions from popular RJs such as RED FM’s RJ Praveen, Radio Mirchi’s RJ Rohit among others. These youth icons discussed how besides entertaining and informing listeners, RJs can have a positive impact on the people.

Speaking on RED FM’s performance at the award ceremony, Nisha Narayanan, said, “What has worked for RED FM is its consistency and a great team with perhaps the best minds in the industry working for RED FM. Innovation and out of box thinking has been the key to the success that we have achieved. In a market scenario where there is clutter, raising the bar in innovation is very critical which is what the team has managed well in both conceptualizing and execution.  The whole RED FM team is very excited to have received the 15 awards this time.  It is a humbling thought.”