The music, too, particularly to managers who listened to western rock on foreign broadcasts, has a wider social significance. Some owners speak of a mission to educate the local public. In purely commercial terms, their taste for foreign music is a disadvantage, judging by the overwhelming success of Russkoe Radio . To retain its market leadership in a very tough market, Radio Passazh in Kazan switched to an all Russian music format. The strategy worked.
Most local independents present a mix of western and Russian music.
The more successful of them long ago put criteria such as personal taste, whether of managers or of DJs, behind them. It is also increasingly rare, fortunately, to hear a manager describe his target audience as 'obshchaya' - general, though it still happens in smaller cities with little competition. Programming is usually more or less tightly formatted, again depending on the level of the competition. The challenge confronting managers is not just that the advertising pool in the major cities is shallow and barely able to sustain the number of competing stations. Business owners and entrepreneurs are often short of marketing skills and have little awareness of how and where to advertise.