Are you tuned in?

In July 1999, the government opened the skies to private broadcasters, permitting 150 new FM channels across 40 cities. Bangalore has its share of radio stations with Radio City (91 fm) and Rainbow (101.3 fm) and has also been allotted few more licenses. Seetal Iyer, Prog. Director with Worldspace for Radio Farishta and Radio Jhankar, is hopeful of more channels being aired in Bangalore.

The programming format of any radio station consists of streamlining the content and playing what the listeners want to listen to. Radio is also a form of Infotainment, where information is exchanged; listeners are educated in music, fashion and news. In addition, radio investigates the nature of language itself–speech as culture, and sound as language–in an era when language has been corrupted by euphemism, double-speak, jargon, and propaganda. As an aural art form it reaffirms that it’s not just what we say, but the way we say it. Gone are the days when Jockeys would talk in well-framed sentences in formatted programs, now radio announcing has gone local and the languages used are the ones used at junk joints.

Ajit Walker (RJ) says: "Radio Jockeying is about individuality and attitude that cannot be instilled or trained. Bangalore does not need pseudo or super imposed style. In auditions programmers are looking out for a different style and voice."

Seetal who has been in the field since 2001 says that the fundamentals to being a radio jockey is the willingness to change according to dynamics and being receptive to the audience, a certain amount of knowledge in music and inter-persoanl skills is a must. "You don't have to sound like Amitabh Bachchan, but you certainly need warmth in your voice," she adds.

In actuality, radio is a paradigm for our time in which ancient traditions combine with instant information, in the global village of mass media. Radio has always been a medium through which various cultural voices meet, converse and merge. While Radio City has undergone a change, airing programs only in Hindi. Rainbow has lured in listeners who prefer Western music.

Radio has become the most creative manifestations in the original holographic virtual space. They’re thoughts in the form of energy transformed into matter through voice. The individual listener is transferred into a world of imagination and perception. The question is which world does the Bangalore listeners want to be transported to. Bangalore, with its very modern outlook, is a city that has an upbeat approach to radio. There is market to every kind of listener. Would listeners give radio drama a try? Yes, they say, but it depends on the genre. Listeners in Bangalore do prefer music-based programs. Wacky and well-made advertisements have become signature statements of radio stations. Listeners associate with them and recognize them instantly, e.g. Lola Kutty on Radio City.

Did video really kill the Radio Star? "No, radio never really died in India, and it due to the fact that, in reality the television is not accessible to everyone. It is only an urban myth that radio is making a comeback and this is due to the recent privatiation and packaging of the medium." says Seetal.

In the next century, or maybe before it, popular radio might disappear, swallowed by the nasty multimedia cyberspace, or an obsolete technology. It might exist in pirate form as a weapon of the questioning voices in the brave tech world. Today, radio is making its online entry but it is still trapped within a screen and a box. Tomorrow, we might have a portable digital technology or/and as interactive phone.


(c) 2005 Puja Goyal