Some of the most memorable songs in the long history of Hindi cinema, like those sung by stalwarts Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar and other greats begin with a gentle, mellifluous hum before the singer actually breaks into the song.
The hum sets the tone for the rest of the song and as it becomes popular, gets the listener to hum and sing with it.
That’s exactly how Auckland’s newest Kiwi Indian radio station Humm FM 106.2 began its broadcasting life on April 1 this year. After slowly and steadily getting more and more listeners to hum along with it following its quiet start, it is now breaking into song as its puts the crucial first quarter of its existence behind it. And by all counts the chorus of hummers it is taking along with it is growing in numbers and volume enough to get even more people humming along.
So, what made the successful husband-wife team of Satyan and Roshila Prasad get into the business of starting another Indian flavoured radio station in a space where two others already existed for a while?
“The idea was suggested by a group of close friends, who like Roshila and me, have for many years wished for a good, meaningful FM radio station for the growing Kiwi Indian community here in Auckland,” co-founder and director Satyan Prasad tells Indian Weekender.
“Our children who are born and raised here did not find the fare dished out by existing radio stations interesting or engaging and almost never liked to listen to Indian radio, though they strongly wished to, because of our love for everything Indian,” adds Roshila Prasad.
Satyan and Roshila emphatically state that they own Humm FM, dispelling all sorts of rumours about the station’s ownership that have swirled since it went on air. “The idea for the station came from some well known friends and people have jumped to conclude that they have a stake in it,” says Satyan. “That is simply not so.”
Addressing a need
Humm FM was carefully planned to appeal to growing numbers of diasporic Indians who cherish their traditional cultural roots while reveling in the culture and mores of their adopted country – an interesting bicultural blend as it were. That’s what led to the radio station beginning and growing with bilingual content from day one.
“It most definitely is a bilingual channel broadcasting in Hindi and English – quite like the manner in which most of us here of Indian origin speak in our everyday lives. That’s what’s the most distinguishing factor of Humm FM, which listeners like, according to the feedback we have been receiving,” says Satyan.
Roshila illustrates this with an interesting instance of customer feedback: “It was rewarding to hear from a keen Humm FM listener – a mother of two teenagers – who said that the bilingual content playing both English and Hindi favourites helped her familiarise herself with what her children were listening and that ‘it gave me something to talk about with the kids at the dinner table’.”
Bilingual content is a conversation starter between parents and children and those who speak with each other in varying degrees of Hindi and English content, as is the case in most Kiwi Indian households.
“It’s helping build bridges between generations and between people because of the chatty, everyday language that our radio jockeys use,” says Satyan. “Humm FM is happy to play whatever little role we can in helping people integrate better and build and strengthen relationships.”
Roshila is quick to add that language used on the station is “Shuddh”: “We absolutely insist that both Hindi and English spoken on the station, while being quite colloquial and chatty, is always grammatically correct – and the grammar we follow is that of Shuddh Indian Hindi.”
Early achievements
In just over a quarter, Humm FM has managed to notch up quite a few achievements, thanks to the critical mass of listeners that it has so quickly gained. Providing a judicious mix of relevant local content presented innovatively and dishing out musical fare in response to what the listener segment is really interested in, has helped Humm FM accumulate its listenership.
“Contemporary and modern music that intersperses our regular Hindi and Bollywood fare has helped bring the larger segment of listeners of wider Asian music to Humm FM,” says Marketing and Business Development Manager Gaurav Gupta.
Other innovative local programming like offering a platform to community organisations and non government organisations doing meaningful work in society to present their own content and slotting appropriate content for the right kind of listener segments at the right time of day and night has also helped the station grow.
Some of these are programmes like “Meri Marzi” a topical one by popular Kiwi Indian comedian and playwright Tarun Mohanbhai, in which he takes his trademark irreverent and funny view of current affairs, the more cerebral Sunday morning “Power Talk” featuring people of eminence interviewed by current affairs expert Shailen Shandil and a slot that popularises new gizmos and gadgets called exactly that – “Gizmos and Gadgets”.
More traditionally, there is “Rewind” with fare from yesteryear, “Ghazal Hour” featuring ghazals and “Mausiki” that focuses on sher-shayari, Sufiana music and more traditional tracks. “Encouragingly, this is attracting more and more appointment listening,” says Gaurav, meaning listeners make a conscious decision to switch on during the respective broadcast times of these programmes.
But one of Humm FM’s greatest successes in such a short span of its existence is the tie up it has managed to secure with popular New Zealand mainstream radio station Newstalk ZB for live broadcast of its local and national news every hour. That tie up has been termed a coup in media circles and helped boost both Humm FM’s profile and credibility.
Word of mouth spreads popularity
Though it is too new to have had any official ratings and statistics to its on air listenership, if one goes by statistics available on Humm FM’s online listenership, the station is on the right track and growing at an incredible rate. Online statistics is far easier to measure and analyse, thanks to embedded technology on internet hosting servers and it is possible to tell how many people have listened to content for how long and from where.
The numbers have pleased the management and creative team of the 24X7 live radio station: Live streams have grown by leaps and bounds in every successive months and its social networking strategy has greatly helped. Its Facebook page has more than 2500 likes. “We don’t pay to get liked on Facebook,” adds Gaurav. “All those likes are quite spontaneous from listeners.”
The popularity of Humm FM underscores the power of word of mouth publicity for a good product. The team attributes this factor for the rapidly rising popularity of the station. “When your offering is good, the word just gets out there,” says Gaurav.
Advertisers Indian Weekender spoke to have heaped praise on the radio station and its management. “We take pride in our systems and culture of transparency,” says Roshila. “This is what clients deeply appreciate. The fact that so many have stayed with us and renewed contracts after the trial period is testimony to this.”
Humm FM has some big plans on both the technology and programming fronts. But because of commercial sensitivity the founding couple would rather not discuss it at this stage. There is a sense of humility that characterises Roshila and Satyan. Both insist that they are new to the business and are on a steep learning curve. “I know very little but we are learning fast and we would rather that our actions speak more than our words.”
We’ll hum along with that – and standby for the next big announcement.