Ever since December of 1906 when the first public radio broadcast took place in Massachusetts, the radio has come a long way as a source of music, news and entertainment.
The first radio broadcast of 1906 was a transmission of Amplitude Modulation or AM Radio and subsequently, Frequency Modulation or FM radio was introduced.
But it was not until the Indian government opened up FM radio broadcasting to the private sector in early 2000 did Satellite radio make an entry into the airwaves .
Satellite radio is quite similar to DTH television service in terms that one had to buy a receiver, install a dish and pay for the service. However, it would not have any advertisements between songs and therefore would offer uninterrupted high quality radio service.
Worldspace Inc, an American company from Maryland, US, offered a digital Satellite radio service in India by making use of its Asiastar satellite to transmit encrypted digital radio across many parts of south Asia. In order to listen you had to buy their receivers and pay an annual fee of eighteen hundred rupees.
The appealing concept of satellite radio was not due of the lack of noisy advertisements, but because the service consisted of up to three dozen channels of music including channels for prominent Indian languages, Hindustani and Carnatic classical music, Western classical, Jazz, Rock, Pop, Dance and Hip-hop music.
News from WRN, BBC, NPR, RFI and wellness channels like Moksha added to the variety. The quality of service was excellent and there were almost no glitches at any time.
Worldspace had a wonderful advertising campaign early on in which they tried to capture the feeling of serendipity while one listened to the radio and then went on to claim that the 'largest music store in the world' had opened in Bangalore. It was quite true that though the store was only selling Worldspace receivers and subscriptions, Worldspace could play almost any song in any genre thanks to its multiple channels.
It was this ability that was quite appealing and Worldspace slowly started becoming more popular. The company offered an IPO on NASDAQ in August 2005 and the following year AR Rahman became its brand ambassador.
Its success however was only limited because it managed to find only 164,000 subscribers in India till 2008 and financial troubles began to plague the company. It posted huge losses in 2007 and 2008 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2008.
In late 2008, Airtel Digital TV started offering some channels of Worldspace radio as part of their audio programming and the subscriber numbers of Worldspace went up to 450,000.
On Christmas day of 2009, the company announced that it was discontinuing operations in India effective 31st of December 2009.
In retrospect, the bankruptcy of Worldspace, the only Satellite radio service to have operated in India was quite avoidable, since the actual product offering was excellent. The low subscription numbers indicate that the company failed to market itself successfully considering the price sensitive nature of Indian subscribers and there have been reports that top management were getting millions of dollars in perks and salaries when the company was posting losses.
In all its a classic example of mis-management. One can only hope that the eventual successor to Worldspace will be more committed to this niche sector and therefore become successful.
