Dubai: The Indian media powerhouse Malayala Manorama Co. sure doesn’t believe that coming in late can be terminal for any business. In fact, it is out to rewrite ancient truisms.
It is a year now that the group launched its Malayalam language FM radio station (Radio Mango 96.2FM) in the UAE, and which was its first venture outside of the southern Indian state of Kerala. But it was getting into a category that was overrun with multiple players, both in the FM and AM spectra. But that was just a sundry detail as far as the group was concerned.
“We have four radio stations (across four key cities) in Kerala that are the number one and it was easy to recreate what worked there in the UAE,” said Anand Mathew, Senior General Manager — Sales, Malayala Manorama Co. “That meant using a mix of entertainment and content rather than just go with entertainment.”
The group also owns the 125-year old ‘Malayala Manorama’ daily, which has a circulation of 2.1 million and is rated the fifth largest circulated newspaper in the world. Its portal, Manorama Online, takes in one billion page views each day. Of this, 30-50 per cent are generated from the Middle East, and especially for those events which have relevance for Indian expatriates.
“Having access to that sort of content meant we could make Radio Mango news-driven as well and we created news slots for every 30 minutes rather than with a one-hour gap which was the norm.
“Our listener and ad numbers are still stabilising in Dubai. Since we have got the content right, it’s only a matter of time before more start tuning into the station. And we always make allowances for a certain gestation phase for people to get to know any new media platform. With the amount of time people spend on the road, we will get there.
“We don’t have plans to get into any other Indian language offerings. We will play to our strengths. But there could be a parallel move into some of the other Gulf markets with the radio station at some point.”
It’s not just getting ahead on radio that the group is chasing in the UAE and other Gulf markets. It was in September 2007 that it started beaming its dedicated TV channel for news to a regional audience. This was latter transformed — in January 2012 — into a “combo” offering that clubbed both the news as well as entertainment programming.
“The plan is to retain the Gulf beam as such unlike what we have in India, where there are two channels for news and entertainment,” said Mathew. “Our competition might have dedicated channels, but the combo has been working for us. And our internal research shows we are a clear Number 2 among Malayalam satellite TV channels here. There isn’t much of a difference with the number 1 and it’s quite likely we will breach that.
“With our newspaper subscriber numbers in the UAE at 70,000 plus and totalling 100,000 in the region, we are ticking all the right boxes. The same formula has been maintained throughout — content is king.”
