It was an August
midnight when the people of India collected in large groups to hear Pt.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s Tryst With Destiny speech. The atmosphere was electrifying.
And the radio was the center of attention.
One of the enduring
images of my childhood is of my father and his friends listening to Lal Bahadur
Shastri’s speech during the 1965 war. Dad had purchased the Murphy radio-set
with its ‘fancy’ piano wave-bands just a few days back to keep track of the
Indo-Pak war developments.
I was a teenager in
Bangalore when Mrs. Indira Gandhi went on the radio to respond to Pakistan’s
aggression with an all-out war.
Those were the days
when a radio broadcast could keep its audiences mesmerized despite the absence
of melodramatic broadcasting personnel. Not just on momentous occasions, but
also during everyday life. Radio pervaded our lives even as we attended to our
daily work without let or hindrance.
When one looks at the
news media scenario today, one can’t help but parody the famous lines from the
classic A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. For Indian
audiences, these are the best of
times, these are the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom; it is the age of
foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is
the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness, it is the spring of hope, it
is the winter of despair, we have everything before us, we have nothing before
us, we are all going direct to Heaven, we are all going direct the other way –
in short, the period is so far like the one when some of its noisiest anchors
insist on their pearls of wisdom being received to superlative plaudits only.
While our affluent TV anchors
strut on the small screen purveying sarkari propaganda, one can only
recall the days when news used to be a genuine product of honest journalism. When
entertainment was soothing, thought-provoking, and essentially directed towards
nation-building. But those days have gone, perhaps forever.
Is there hope for a
genuine infotainment media outlet?
Let us have a look at
the only electronics infotainment medium which is struggling to make a comeback
in popularity stakes, while the glamorous mainstream TV channels happily loll
in the laps of their political-corporate masters, yapping as directed. Radio,
the old hag – once the empress of airwaves – is straining to climb out of
history’s dustbin.
The radio is a child of
the historical invention when Guglielmo Marconi got the first patent on radio
sets in March 1897. It became a technology that benefited ships in distress on
the high-seas. During the first world war, the radio played a crucial role in
communicating with the soldiers on the battlefront.
As is their wont,
Americans converted this strategic technology into a money-spinner. The KDKA
established a commercially licensed radio station and made its first broadcast
on November 2, 1920. Two years later, BBC made its first broadcast on November
14, 1922.
The radio arrived in
India when the Presidency Club of Madras, now Chennai, established its radio
facility in 1924. Some businesspersons in Bombay, now Mumbai, established the
Indian Broadcasting Company and established a proper radio broadcasting
facility on July 23, 1927, and another in Calcutta, now Kolkata, in August
1926.
In those days, there were
only about 3000 licensed radio owners in India, offering little scope for
revenue generation. The IBC folded up in 1930. The colonial government took
over its broadcasting facilities and launched the Indian State Broadcasting
Service.
Lionel Fielden assumed
charge of the Indian State Broadcasting Service in August 1935. His tenure laid
the foundations for a magnificent and enduring infotainment superstructure. He
was whimsical, but had the gift of thinking out of the box. He defied the
government to ensure that the radio service represented the voice of India. On
8 June 1936, the ISBS was renamed All India Radio. Today it is known as
‘Akashvani’, the celestial voice. Interestingly, a ‘Congress Radio’ was set up
on September 3, 1942, by Usha Mehta, around the time when the Quit India
Movement was launched. It claimed to be from “somewhere in India” and played a
cat-and-mouse game with the police, as the portable radio station shifted
location.
In 1956, nine years
after India’s independence, the name Akashvani was adopted for India’s National
Broadcaster. Some claim this name was borrowed from a poem by Rabindranath
Tagore. However, a radio station called ‘Akashvani’ had already been established
in Mysore in September 1935. The name could have come from there, too. One MV
Gopalaswamy is another claimant to the authorship of the Akashvani
name.
From a mere six at the
time of independence, All India Radio now has over 400 radio stations catering
to India’s entire population in 23 languages and over 140 dialects. Its
External Services Division broadcasts programs reach out to over 100 countries.
It took AIR seven years
to launch Vividh Bharti, the entertainment channel to counter Radio Ceylon. But
the real challenge came in the shape of television. Revenues from private
advertisers fell, as these were now diverted to TV channels. The dawn of
private TV channels spelt AIR’s doom as a viable commercial entity.
After flapping in
darkness for years, radio made a strong comeback in India in 1995, when AIR’s
FM channels began broadcasting. In 1999, the Government announced a liberalized
policy to expand FM Radio broadcasting through private sector FM radio
stations. These shows, apart from providing entertainment, are also supposed to
supplement the AIR’s efforts at spreading socially beneficial information. But
their programming is unoriginal and second-rate, to put it mildly. The desire
to take on internet-based infotainment platforms is missing. The radio jockeys
are happy retailing idiocies and have failed to attract listeners. Quality
programs are absent.
AIR’s only source of
revenue is government ads, which is not enough to sustain this giant entity.
Private sector advertisers seek such programming and promotions that would help
build their brands. For this, a high level of innovative skills is required.
Although private FM channels have made some interesting innovations in brand
promotions, AIR mandarins are still floundering in a quagmire of bureaucratese.
In the United States,
radio is holding its own against TV and OTT platforms. The following figures of
weekly listeners indicate the popularity of some of the American radio
programs:
· The Rush Limbaugh
Show: 15.5 million listeners.
· The Sean Hannity
Show: 15 million listeners.
· Marketplace
Financial News: 14.8 million listeners.
· All Things
Considered: 14.7 million listeners.
· The Dave Ramsey
Show: 14 million listeners.
· Morning Edition: 13.9 million
listeners.
· The Mark Levin
Show: 11 million listeners.
No reliable figures regarding
India’s radio listenership are available. But one can gauge the situation from
the fact that Prime Minister Modi’s Mann Ki Baat on the radio has to be
simultaneously relayed on obliging mainstream TV news channels to stimulate
people’s interest.
It is time for AIR to
give serious thought to improving the quality of its programs. There was a time
when it was overflowing with creativity. Its dramas – based on excellent
literature – provided quality entertainment. There is a need to re-establish
AIR’s credentials as a formidable infotainment giant of 21st century
India. Ad revenue will start flowing in as a natural consequence.
