Imagine travelling through India by car and being able to listen to the same radio stations all the way through. That is the uniqueness of digital radio, which has just begun to gain a foothold in India. Digital radio signals, beamed from a satellite, can be received anywhere.
Worldspace, the only company that offers digital radio in India for a monthly subscription of Rs 40 or Rs 50, expects a manifold rise in their subscriber base in the near future.
As of now, digital radio is not mobile. You have to be at home, or in the office, or wherever your radio antenna is fixed, to receive signals on your set. You also need a radio set that can receive digital radio signals in addition to normal AM and FM signals.
M G Chandrashekhar, former scientific secretary of the Indian Space Research Organisation, who recently took over as chief executive of the US-based Worldspace in India, says the company plans to go mobile within the year. By then, the company hopes to build a subscriber base of 100,000, and increase the number of its special Indian music channels to 50.
Worldspace has 500,000 subscribers in the US. It has 10,000 subscribers for its Indian pay channels.
The company offers six Indian channels. Three of the channels are in Hindi: Farishta, the golden oldies channel, Gandharva, the classical music channel and Le Jhoom, the new Hindi music channel. Two channels are in Tamil and one in Malayalam. Besides, there are more than a dozen Worldspace channels produced elsewhere that offers English pop, ultra pop, orbit rock and just about every other kind of music you can think of.
Presently music sets capable of receiving digital radio signals are imported from Japan. BPL has began making the sets in India in three models priced at Rs 7000, Rs 8500 and Rs 9000.
These sets can also receive regular analog radio in addition to digital radio, and can be used like any other regular portable music system. The antenna costs about Rs 1000 apiece.
"We are not making a profit yet," says Chandrashekhar. Besides radio, the company has three other revenue sources - lease charges paid by broadcasters, subscriptions from listeners and fees from closed user groups.
Under the last category, for example, the company has users like the United Nations Development Programme, which is broadcasting information on AIDS to a network of 400 community radio centres in Nepal.
Worldspace has more than 250,000 subscribers worldwide. The corporation owns two satellites - Afristar and Asiastar - which beam to Africa and Asia. India receives signals from both satellites.
Worldspace has retail and distribution systems in New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. "The cost of space and satellite technology is so prohibitive that very little money is left over for high-powered marketing," says Chandrashekhar.
