Radio Mirchi most popular in Metros: Survey

New Delhi, Jan 3: Continuing to lead from the front in the private FM radio industry, Radio Mirchi (98.3 FM) has the largest daily listenership of 95.61 lakh in the combined markets of Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, leaving behind its nearest competitor Radio City by a wide margin, reveals a survey.

The findings of Indian Listenership Track (ILT) 2006 Wave 2 for Mumbai and Delhi and Kolkata, conducted by MRUC and ACNielsen ORG-MARG, were released today.

Radio Mirchi, owned by Entertainment Network (India) Limited (ENIL) and the country's largest private radio network, has listenership figures of 26.29 lakh in Mumbai, 42.01 lakh in Delhi and 27.31 lakh in Kolkata.

The research, for which the field work was done from mid-September to end-November last year, also shows that radio listenership as determined by ''Yesterday Listeners'' has gone up in Mumbai by adding 4 lakh listeners.

Also, there is a marked transformation from casual listeners to regular listeners. On the other hand, Delhi has registered a marginal growth, adding only 65,000 listeners.

In comparison to 2006 Wave 1 (for Mumbai), Radio Mirchi has not only retained its numero uno position but successfully widened the gap with its nearest competitor Radio City to 40 per cent.

In Delhi, Radio Mirchi maintained its 2:1 lead over the nearest competitor. In Kolkata, Radio Mirchi completely dominated the market, it had more listeners than all other radio stations put together.

Kolkata was covered for the first time in the ILT and the city raked up almost 41 lakh daily listeners.

Radio City was the next station in terms of reach with 18.93 lakh and 20.94 lakh daily listeners in Mumbai and Delhi respectively.

Red FM has 16.58 lakh, 20.48 lakh and 7.64 lakh daily listeners in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata respectively.

The ILT, a product of MRUC and ACNielsen ORG-MARG research, has been designed on the 'Day After Recall' methodology, which provides Yesterday Listenership (YDL) data across all stations in Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi.

ENIL, the country's first pure play radio broadcasting company to be listed, launched its first radio station in Indore in October 2001. At present, Radio Mirchi is operational in 10 cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, Indore, Ahmedabad and Pune.

Radio Mirchi is considered to be the leader in the private FM radio industry and will shortly be operational in twenty-two additional cities.

UNI