The Hindu Business Line : Big 92.7 FM to have 45 stations running by May

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Chennai Feb. 8 Big 92.7 FM, the FM radio venture of Adlabs Films Ltd, will complete the rollout of all its radio stations by April-May 2007.

Ms Lakshmi N. Sharath, Vice-President and Regional Head - South, Big 92.7 FM, said that with 45 stations up and running, Big 92.7 FM would be the largest private radio station network in the country.

The investment, as earlier announced, would be Rs 400 crore.

Currently, Big 92.7 FM is present in 11 cities.

In the South, Big 92.7 FM is available in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad and in the second phase would see radio stations in Puducherry, Thiruvananthapuram, Tirupathi, Visakhapatnam, Mysore and Mangalore.

Radio is a powerful medium and with smaller towns coming into the network, advertisers can reach Section B, C, D markets easily, she said. The impact of FM in smaller towns is higher. The Jammu station, for instance, receives the highest number of SMS, Ms Sharath said.

Big 92.7 FM is positioned as a station for the contemporary adult, and offers value-adds such as jobs, career advice and game shows.

Content focus

Ms Sharath said that Big 92.7 FM was working on content differentiation and will have programmes for various target groups. In Hyderabad, Big FM is launching a wedding-based programme where a buzz would be created around a wedding, not of celebrities but ordinary people.

On February 15, Big FM will have a show called Thanga Mazhai in which a gold coin will be given as a gift.

Ms Sharath said that Friday is an important day for Big 92.7 FM, when the date coincides with the station's frequency.

She said that the stations planned to celebrate the day along with listeners. Listeners would be given gift coupons for diamond pendants every hour by answering questions the solutions to which are basically 9, 2 or 7.

Apart from on-air contests there will be gifts given to babies born on Friday, and to bikes with 927 as part of their registration number.