Radio entered India in 1926 with two low-power broadcasting stations in Mumbai and Kolkata. However, it was not until 1936 that AIR began its operations and the trend of setting one's watch to the time announced by the radio became a norm.

It was much later (in 1996 to be precise) that private FM radio services started and satellite radio services started. With the 2nd round of licensing and 338 FM radio licenses and 91 cities being covered; the listener will now have more music choices available. Going by the international benchmark, even 150 stations across India is a sustainable proposition. India's radio industry is projected to post a robust growth of 32 percent over the next few years to touch Rs. 12 billion in revenues by 2010. Proliferation of FM radio has truly set in early 2005. With increasing traveling times, the radio filled up the niche in the people's lives that was vacant.

Recently, government has liberalized radio broadcast and this has resulted in most media houses diversifying to offer radio services.

To deep dive into the radio in India, following factors need to be taken into account:

Audience measurement

Unlike the TV industry, radio, until very recently, did not have any measure for listenership. At the very best, radio was relegated to a support/reminder media. A few left over marketing money was put into radio. The pricing too was anything but organized. There were fierce sales deals, rate cuts to push one station over the other - the delight of any media buyer.

RAM was launched in September 2007 in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. It has recently added Kolkata in the sample and is now looking to expand in markets like Hyderabad and Chennai soon.

With RAM now in place, there are benchmarks, lot more objectivity, and science in the whole media planning exercise.

Content

While the content too has evolved lot over time, each station ends up being a clone of the other. The only differentiation to an extent is perhaps in the language of the content - local, Hindi, or English. All channels end up meting out the same filmy numbers, repeated over and over, again and again. This is probably a result of all stations wanting to reach out to the masses, get as much listenership as possible by playing the least common denominator. The character of a station has never come out alive, either in what they present or in how it is presented.

With Indian market opening up and ISP services starting in 1996, a world of information opened up to the youth of today. Internet has become a ubiquitous medium, a medium for content exploitation. The youth today has access to millions of songs of different variety. He has the hardware to playback the same to him. The youth today wants his kind of music whenever he wants it and at any place wherever he is. FM in its current incarnation is not good enough for him.

However, now the industry is waking up to this fact and some RJs are making their mark and are giving a character to the station they represent. Stations themselves are trying to standout among competitors Meow for instance is trying to stand for India's first just for women radio station.

With the biggest bugbear license fees now corrected, nothing stops players from offering different types of music. In fact this is already out there in the offing. WorldSpace Satellite Radio offers over 40 premium channels to choose from. One can flip from Bach or Mozart to Beyonce and Madonna or from MS Subbulakshmi and Gangubhai Hangal to Bollywood hits and regional Indian tunes.

This sheer variety of audio content is paralleled only by its rich and crystal clear digital quality. This is soon to be emulated by various FM channels as well, each standing for a kind of music, carving out a niche for themselves.

The days of generalization are over. To satisfy the demands of every demanding youth, the radio industry is constantly evolving and nothing will stop the radio industry from achieving its past glory.