DATUK Borhanuddin Osman has harboured one dream since he joined Astro’s radio arm, Airtime Management & Programming Sdn Bhd (AMP Radio Networks), as general manager in 1999.

It is to see radio advertising, which a decade ago accounted for only 2% of the country’s total advertising expenditure (adex), grow and contribute 6% to total adex.

Borhanuddin has been working towards that goal as president of Commercial Radio Malaysia (CRM), an association representing almost all of the country’s private radio broadcasters.

His dream is within reach. Last year radio had a 5.5% share of total adex, up from 4.7% in 2008, based on Nielsen data. (In comparison, radio accounted for 7% and 8% of the adex pies of Singapore and Australia, respectively.)

For the first four months of this year, radio’s share in Malaysia fell to 5.1%, but Borhanuddin expects radio spending to pick up after the FIFA World Cup.

“The radio advertising shortfall is largely due to clients shifting some of the 2010 budget to other media in support of the World Cup 2010,” he tells StarBizWeek. “Such shifts are quite normal in our industry, particularly when it comes to global events with multiple platforms for client support. The same situation occurred with the Olympics.

“The radio industry advertising growth is still positive and we expect to meet our targets by year-end 2010.”

He expects radio’s share to be maintained at 5.5% this year.

Borhanuddin hopes to see his dream of 6% radio share come true before he bids farewell to the industry. In that, he still has some time. Not only was he recently elected CRM president for the 7th term, his contract with AMP Radio (as executive director) has been renewed for two years.

“We were at the low-end of the advertising spectrum for radio, and I had vowed, as CRM president, to drive total radio advertising to 6%. My extension with AMP and as CRM president now gives me a little more time to achieve our goal – and perhaps even exceed it,” he says.

There will be more CRM activities this year to promote radio to the marketers, listeners and potential job candidates.

For starters, Radio Day will continue to be celebrated this year. The association launched the inaugural Radio Day on Sept 9 last year, involving RTM’s radio stations as well at its gathering at The Curve, Petaling Jaya.

But as Sept 9 this year is just a day or two before Hari Raya, CRM plans to make the announcement of its future activities to the media a week earlier.

Personally, Borhanuddin hopes there could be a newspaper supplement that explains the history of radio in the country. “We’re thankful that people like Tok Mat (former Information Minister Tan Sri Mohamed Rahmat), Patrick Teoh and Yasmin Yusoff who helped to build up radio,” he says.

Radio has evolved over the years, blending in with the new media. “We now have multiple platforms – on air, on ground, on Internet, on mobile, on television,” he notes.

The future is expected to see Malaysia adopting the digital audio broadcasting (DAB) technology, which has been available in countries like Australia and Singapore. Among others, it allows listeners to choose specific programmes – news, music, etc – offered by radio stations at a touch and at the time of their choice.

“It’s total transformation,” he says. CRM members, along with radio association members from Hong Kong and Indonesia, went to Australia earlier this year where Commercial Radio Australia showed them the whole DAB process.

CRM introduced Radio Fest, a carnival aimed at “giving back” to the listeners, six years ago. This year, for the first time, CRM is bringing the annual event out of the Klang Valley. It will be held in Kuching on Oct 2.

“If we do it in KL again, there would be no excitement since there are already too many activities here. We (AMP Radio) have discovered that when we do activities outside the Klang Valley, we would be able to get the crowd,” Borhanuddin says, adding that attendance at Radio Fest had tapered off.

Radio Fest will be jointly organised by the Star Rfm group and Cats FM of Kuching this year, and CRM plans to get artistes from Sabah and Sarawak to perform as well as from the peninsula.

“Radio Fest is also held to show the unity of CRM members. Separately we can have our own individual activities, but we can also work together to present to the public this event,” he says, adding that all of CRM’s 19 member stations will promote it.

CRM used to have its creative award show, the AIR Awards, during Radio Fest, but it ceased after the radio categories were expanded at the Kancil Awards organised by the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents.

Does CRM plan to re-start its award programme? Borhanuddin says he would personally like to see the radio industry having its own award show but without the creative award component. Instead the show would honour people such as engineers and those involved in production.

However, he adds that the CRM council hasn’t discussed about having such an award show in recent times.

Apart from Radio Day and Radio Fest, CRM will hold Planet Radio, a free career talk for graduates and undergraduates interested in the radio industry.

Scheduled for November, this programme was introduced only last year, held at Astro’s headquarters in Bukit Jalil.
“The students write in or go online to say they’re interested. Last year we had 40 participants. We want the young to come so there’s continuity. If they have the potential, we would take them as interns,” he says.

This year CRM wants to make the event bigger. “I think the venue will be a university so we should be able to get easily 200 participants,” he says.

The advertising fraternity is not forgotten. For the first time, CRM will hold a three-day boot camp for them starting Sept 24.

“We want to make radio more creative. Radio is theatre of the mind. How can you get paint clients for example to show colours through radio? Is brown the sound of leaves being stepped on? There are so many ways to show creativity,” he says.
CRM expects to bring in experts from as far as Britain to educate the industry on what works and what doesn’t in radio advertising.

On the Government’s plan to make it compulsory for radio stations to play songs by local artistes, he says the issue has been solved after CRM met the Information, Communication and Culture Ministry chief secretary.

A panel comprising RTM and other bodies will be formed to select quality local content to pass to the radio stations.

“We have been playing local content. Indonesian songs are just a trend that comes and goes. People’s tastes change. To us, having local content is not a major issue as we abide by the 70% local content rule. If we can get the local content, we would play it. But recording now is done by computer, so the question is: is the (production) quality of the local content good?” he says.

*Article taken from The Star