Adlabs Films to demerge FM business
Adlabs Films Limited, a part of the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group, would demerge the FM radio business and establish it as a separate company, an official said.
Chief Operating Officer of BIG 92.7 FM, the radio division of Adlabs, Tarun Katial said it would be hived off into a separate company. However, he declined to give a time-frame in this regard.
Launching BIG 92.7 FM here on Wednesday, Katial said Kolkata was the company’s fifth radio station after Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, which would soon be followed by Mumbai.
As per the national roll-out plan, the FM station would be launched in 45 countrywide destinations by April 2007.
Katial said that as per a survey carried out by IMRB, the FM station plans to touch 200 million listeners in India.
Adlabs had invested nearly Rs 400 crore on purchase of transmission equipment, building infrastructure and obtaining license.
He said the company plans to take FM radio as an entertainment medium not only in key metros, but also in virgin markets. Initially, the FM station would target 1,000 towns and 50,000 villages across the country.
Katial said that Abhishek Bachchan had been selected as the brand ambassador for the FM station whose punchline would be, "Big is Beautiful".
The radio station’s content would be localised to the preference of the listeners. For instance, Katial said, for the first time ever the Feluda series of detective stories by the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray would be serialised on the network.
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