MUMBAI: Neelesh Misra won the RJ of the Year award for his Big FM show 'Yaadon ka Idiot Box' at the India Radio Forum Awards held on Friday in Mumbai.

Red FM's Morning No 1 won the Best Breakfast programme award and Radio Mirchi's Delhi station was adjudged the Best Radio Station. Red FM also won the Best Radio Promo award.

The IRF awards. held in conjunction with the annual India Radio Forum, aim to support and recognise quality in radio broadcast. The 11th edition of the awards, which celebrate the best of Indian radio, honouring outstanding programming, on-air personalities were distributed under four categories- Programming, Talent, Promotion and Marketing and Advertising. Red FM won 11 awards followed by Big FM which grabbed eight metals and Radio Mirchi with six metals at the award ceremony held at The Westin Garden City, Mumbai.

The Forum focused on the challenges that the Radio broadcast industry faces kick started with an opening speech by Rajat Uppal, National Marketing Head of Red FM and Ashwin Padmanabhan, COO BIG FM. This was followed by an interesting session on measuring ROI for Radio by Gaurav Mehta of OLX.

RBNL CEO Tarun Katial, speaking about radio’s relevance in the mobile world, said, “FM has the availability to give music on mobile phones. As we bring in differentiation on music formats, people will have the options to choose from retro to contemporary to top 100 songs. No new media has killed any new media but it always evolves.

” Radio Mirchi CEO Prashant Panday, while focusing on the digital platform said, “The one message, I would like to give to brands is explore online and digital mediums for business rather than sticking to only one platform. One needs to come out of the comfort zone and do what is best for the business rather than sticking to only one platform for the growth.”

Zenith Optimedia CEO Hari Krishnan said, “2015 has been a great year for radio according to KPMG and FICCI. With phase 3, the industry finally saw the light day. The radio industry has evolved a lot, in terms of experimenting with the content but somehow advisers still see thin gap somewhere. There are five potential loopholes in realm of brand story telling through video. In 2015, 2265 first time advertisers in 2015, which includes all kind of startups. Being a medium with lots of limitations this year has not been as great for radio industry so far but with many new brands coming in with FDI, Radio industry will have a big opportunity to offer clutter breaking options. Radio is magical, powerful but under-leveraged medium.”

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