Radio Silence: The slow fade of India’s FM business

There was a time when the FM radio was the commuter’s most loyal companion—free, local, chatty, undemanding. You flicked it on and an RJ was already mid-sentence, the dial crackling between film songs, traffic updates and banter that made a jam bearable. Gone, increasingly, are those days. A handful of stations survive; many others have fallen silent.

The distress signals are coming from India’s biggest media houses. HT Media has exited radio altogether, while TV Today Network, part of the India Today Group, has moved to shut its Ishq 104.8 FM operations. Nor are these isolated: three private FM stations shut down in 2025 as they were financially unviable, according to the FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment Report 2026.

The question is no longer whether radio faces disruption. It does. The sharper one is whether the traditional FM business can survive it, or whether radio companies must become broader content businesses.

A business built on the 20-second spot

The private FM model is deceptively simple. Broadcasters buy spectrum at government auctions, carry the licence and operating costs, and monetise their audience almost entirely through advertising. The proposition to a brand was always mass reach at a low price. It breaks the moment yields fall while costs stay fixed.

And radio’s costs are stubbornly fixed. Licence and spectrum fees, transmission and salaries do not shrink at the pace revenue does. A station can lose listeners and pricing power yet still owe the same licence fee and run the same transmitter: a shrinking revenue pool on a cost base that barely moves.

The numbers show the trap closing. India’s radio segment earned about ₹2,300 crore in 2025, down 7% even as ad volumes rose 2%, according to the FICCI-EY report. Volumes climbed in smaller towns but fell by as much as 20% in the high-yield metros, while average yields dropped 9%. National advertisers, including FMCG majors, pulled back; lower-paying retail advertisers filled the gap, at some companies accounting for 75% of ad volumes.

Ashish Pherwani, partner and media & entertainment leader at EY India, insists the product itself is sound. “Radio will always be there,” he says: it is free, and it curates music for the masses. The trouble is the business around it. He counts four stress points: a high cost structure, curbs on news, no robust measurement system, and the disappearing FM receiver.

Two exits, one diagnosis

The two biggest departures left by different doors. HT Media pulled the plug outright: in May 2026, its filings to the exchanges show, the company and its subsidiaries Next Radio and HT Music & Entertainment surrendered the licences for Radio Nasha (91.9 FM, Mumbai), Radio One (94.3 FM, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru) and Fever FM (91.9 FM, Chennai), calling them “financially and strategically unviable”. Tellingly, there was no buyer: these were frequencies handed back, not sold. The licences ran until 2030 and 2031, yet the company exited years early, and all five stations went off air on June 15, 2026. According to the company’s audited financial statements, radio brought in just ₹29.19 crore in FY25, contributing just 1.62% to HT Media’s consolidated revenue; the combined net worth of these radio stations stood at a negative ₹172.08 crore. In HT Media’s annual report for FY26, chairperson & editorial director Shobhana Bhartia called it a tough year and said non-viable licences had been surrendered to sharpen the company’s footprint. That a diversified media house saw no case for radio only raises the pressure on standalone operators. A detailed questionnaire e-mailed to HT Media did not elicit a response till the time the story was published.

As for TV Today, it tried to sell. Its filings to the bourses show that the board resolved in January 2025 to exit Ishq 104.8 FM in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. It struck a ₹20-crore deal with Creative Channel Advertising and Marketing Private Limited (CCAMPL) to sell the FMbusiness, but the buyer withdrew; later it also tried restructuring the business by parking it in subsidiary Vibgyor Broadcasting—a move cleared by the information and broadcasting ministry. In November 2025, TV Today signed a fresh MoU with Abhijit Realtors and Infraventures for ₹10 crore. Ishq FM had earned ₹14.16 crore in FY25, alongside a net loss of ₹10.54 crore. A detailed questionnaire e-mailed to TV Today did not elicit a response till the time the story was published.

Similar challenges, different exits: one broadcaster returned its spectrum, the other is trying to offload it.

Is streaming really killing radio?

It is tempting to blame Spotify, YouTube and podcasts for the struggles of FM radio. India had about 178 million active music-streaming users in 2025, according to the FICCI-EY report; streams rose 14.7% to 5.8 trillion and paid subscriptions jumped 37% to roughly 14 million. The difference is philosophical: radio tells you what plays next; streaming lets you choose.

But Pherwani points to a quieter threat: the vanishing FM receiver. Many smartphones no longer carry one, and physical radio buttons are disappearing from cars. The FICCI-EY report calls this “existential”, because it strikes at radio’s most valuable slot: the commute.

Kolkata-based Mir Afsar Ali, who had a nearly 30-year run as a radio jockey on FM, offers a gentler reason. “Radio is a very universal medium,” he says. “Even the '90s-born kid will tell you radio was part of his or her growing-up process. You play that frequency, let it go idle, and it keeps playing in the background while you work.” But he mourns what has gone quiet: “Fever and Nasha would only play retro. In the metros it’s largely closed down, that’s a big loss."

Can radio prove its value to advertisers?

Radio’s deeper problem is not attention, it is accountability. An advertiser can now split a budget across OTT, connected TV, search, social, retail media and influencers, each with granular targeting and hard metrics. Radio still cannot reliably say how many people heard a spot, or what they did next. And if you cannot count the ears, you cannot defend the rate. Chandrashekar Mantha, media & entertainment leader at Deloitte India, puts the global radio industry at more than $100 billion and India’s at around $2.4 billion, a market that has contracted 7–8% in a year on advertising pressure and pricing. The FICCI-EY report flags the absence of third-party monitoring and a unified industry voice.

Here lies India’s peculiar bind. Globally, radio has proved resilient, underpinned by strong public broadcasting, in-dashboard integration and credible listenership currencies. In India, news curbs, no measurement standard, disappearing receivers and near-total dependence on advertising leave it far more exposed.

Could regulatory changes give radio a reset?

Pherwani argues radio is over-regulated, barred from news even as audiences get it everywhere, while shouldering spectrum and licence costs its digital rivals never pay. The FICCI-EY report notes the licence fee is being delinked from the Non-Refundable One-Time Entry Fee, with a proposed 4% of adjusted gross revenue for new authorisations. Broadcasters would pay on what they earn, not on auction prices set years ago.

When every station sounds the same

Former radio jockey Praveen Sethia says the medium has also wounded itself, growing less distinctive as RJs are judged on social-media reach and stations sound alike. “Radio was very, very personal at one point of time,” he says. His prescription is hyperlocal content: a listener stuck near Park Circus in Kolkata wants the traffic snarl flagged and an alternative route, a utility no national platform can match. Radio, he argues, needs content as a reason to tune in.

Can radio reinvent its business model?

The reinvention has begun. Non-FCT revenue, including podcasts, content production, influencer marketing and events, contributed 25% of radio companies’ revenue in 2025, the highest on record and over 30% for some, according to the FICCI-EY report, which expects that share to hit 39% by 2028.

Rajesh Sethi, partner and leader, media, entertainment and sports at PwC India, sees this as the whole game. The model built on scheduled programming and advertising is buckling, he says, as on-demand music, podcasts and short-form audio capture attention. “The future of radio lies in evolving from a standalone broadcast business into an integrated media and entertainment ecosystem that brings together live radio, podcasts, micro-dramas, music, audio series, creator content and personalised experiences,” he says, pointing to hyperlocal commerce, local deals and community events as fresh revenue streams. The prize is the listener relationship, not the 20-second spot.

Technology may help. TRAI’s October 2025 recommendations propose digital radio in simulcast mode, letting one frequency carry one analogue, three digital and one data channel, opening the door to specialised retro, pop, regional or talk channels while keeping it free.

So, is Indian radio really dying?

Not quite. Stations going dark is a warning, and the muted auctions another: just 62 licences sold across 43 of 234 cities on offer in 2025, according to the FICCI-EY report, which expects the market to drift to ₹2,200 crore by 2028. But radio still offers what digital struggles to manufacture: local trust and companionship. It can read the road ahead, speak a regional tongue, activate a community.

The stations falling silent are not proof that Indians have stopped listening. They are proof that the old way of making money from radio has stopped working: a cost structure built for the 2000s colliding with a content model that assumed music alone would keep the dial from turning. The frequency may remain; the business around it must change. It could be radio plus podcasts, creators, events, commerce. Whether India’s next story is decline or reinvention turns on that distinction.