Excellence in Radio Awards (ERA) at the India Radio Forum 2018 recognised and celebrated the best of Indian radio industry on Friday.
The show was opened by B. Surendar, COO of RED FM Network, followed by an interesting discussion by Abraham Thomas of Radio City, who shared his vision along with speakers like Divya Karani, CEO – Dentsu India and Rohit Upadhyay, MD & CEO, iBroad 7 Communication in their session titled, the 'Power of Radio', offering some relevant pointers, discussing its reach, impact, depth and application.
This was followed by an engaging session moderated by Naresh Gupta from Bang in the Middle who used his experience of over two decades to shed light on the role of Radio, as a medium, in building brands which included speakers like Mausumi Kar, MD, GroupM India and Priti Murthy, CEO, OMD India.
The most engaging session of the day – a conversation between Radio expert, Elliot Stechman of the AVC Group and Tapas Sen, Chief Programming Officer of Radio Mirchi. The enthralling conversation, led to their opinions and strategic insights shedding light on the need for a robust infrastructure to further build up the Indian Radio industry along with investments on the right talent at the right time.
The last session of the day, moderated by Rajat Uppal, National Marketing Head of RED FM Network, titled 'Creating Brands and Sub-Brands in a Cluttered Space', revolved around how good products need and variety in offerings to consumers help build a brand. Joining him on stage was the popular RJ Malishka, Swaroop Banerjee of Tribe Asia, Joy Chouhan of JWT Delhi and Saahil Kumar of Sennheiser.
Speaking about the radio industry and the platform, Nisha Narayanan, COO of Red FM Network said: “The industry is coming together under one umbrella to conduct a research which has been long over-due for the industry like ours. It's fair that we need to have data to support where we stand and the impact of the medium considering Radio is the 2nd largest growing industry in the media & entertainment sector.”
Speaking about radio as a medium, Tapas Sen, Chief Programming Officer of Radio Mirchi, said: “Radio Programmers now need to view themselves not just as Radio Jocks or Producers, but as “Content-Creators”. And therefore, become platform agnostic. The way to take Radio to the next level is to transgress its boundaries and view all other media as a seamless continuity for Content proliferation and distribution.”
93.5 Red FM won the Best FM Network award and RJ Chaitu from its Hyderabad station won the newly introduced People Choice Awards – a Facebook voting poll.
The Jury Gold award for the RJ of the Year (Hindi) was awarded to Annu Kapoor of 92.7 BIG FM and Radio City 91.1 FM won the Gold award for the Best Breakfast Programme (Hindi). Ishq 104.8FM won the Gold for Most Creative campaign for 'Calling Karan' while Best Interactive Idea went to RED FM Network for 'Bajao for a Cause'.
See the complete list of winners here.