ABP Pvt Ltd will launch its FM radio station in Kolkata in the second half of this year.
Pramath Sinha, president, said the company had not yet made any decision about the nature of the channel.
The company is putting together a business development team and conducting research to gauge market perception of existing stations.
Earlier this year, ABP had secured a licence for a private FM radio station for the Kolkata circle. The others players who successfully bid in the second round of biding for private FM radio licences were Ablabs, HT Music, Radio Today and Radio Mid-Day.
The Kolkata bid was secured by Ananda Offset, a group company, but the radio station will be run by a strategic business unit within ABP, Sinha said.
Sinha, who took over as president four months ago, says he has 'aggressive plans', especially for a number of websites 'to monetise some of our property'. He dismissed talks of getting into film production or launching a Marathi news channel.
ABP group is known for Anandabazar Patrika, the largest-selling Bengali daily, and The Telegraph, the largest selling English newspaper in eastern India. It owns Businessworld and a number of special-interest Bengali magazines such as Sananda and Desh.
Over the years, the media house has made several forays into new media. It ventured into television in 2003 with a 74 per cent stake in Media Content and Communications India Pvt Ltd.
The company now runs Star News and Star Ananda, the leading 24-hour Bengali news channel launched in June last year. ABP, which launched anandautsav.com in 2003, also owns Heyya, a mobile internet portal launched in November 2005.
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