Radio ga ga

SO all the FM stations are up and running. Radio Mirchi, the Times'' own station, was first off the mark and sent all the others into panic mode to catch up and get on the air.
The fact that they came on in reasonably quick time, goes to show, once again, how enterprising private enterprise really is.
What about the content? The RJs are smart and snappy and say what they have to say very, very short.
What a contrast from the days of All India Radio FM monopoly when the RJs thought that music meant the sound of their own voices.
I once drove from Nariman Point to Chowpatty along Marine Drive — a 10 minute drive, early in the morning — and heard only one song.
Which means that the young lady who laughed languorously at her own witticisms talked for 70 per cent of the time.
As contrast, I will offer a recent example: while being interviewed for one of the chat shows, I could only watch open-mouthed while the RJ spoke in time to a song beat.
It was a very fast beat; she rattled off station ID, the time, day and date, the title of the song and the name of the singer and a breezy “Good Morning� to me all in seconds. Breathless.
But, of course, speed isn''t all. Nor is smartness and brightness, however cheering they are in a startingthe-day-off traffic jam.
All the radio stations, more or less, are fighting for the same thing. It''s too early to tell who is doing better than whom, but a few weeks down the line, rating agencies will do their stuff and we will know who is scoring more than the others.
The ratings may not necessarily tell you who is doing the best programmes, they will, as usual, tell you which programmes are being listened to more than the others.
On the other hand, the rating might — just might — tell you that people are flicking stations like they switch TV channels - so quickly that it''s difficult to get a fix on listener figures. The reason for that is already clear: each station is trying to do exactly the same thing.
Which is to try and get maximum listeners. Since there is only one formula for that, each station is playing a slight variation of the same formula.
That formula is Indipop, Hindi film music, Hindi music remixes and Western pop. Whichever station gets the proportion of these ingredients right and makes its presentations the smartest, will win.
But will will win? Obviously not. That''s because in starting this Great FM War, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has once again lost the great opportunity to give us the true diversity of the radio medium.
It did that by refusing to think beyond money. “All those private players are desperate to get into radio,� seemed to be the official thinking, “So let''s make them pay through the nose.�
Thus radio stations were virtually given on the basis of the highest bids. And the bids were really high, since media houses could not afford a lose out on a new field like this.
In fact the bids are probably uneconomical, and only staying power can sustain them. Staying power and the ability to attract the widest possible listener base, which is where our popular formula comes in.
So is radio only about making money? It seems to be, at least for the government. But there was another option open to the authorities, not so lucrative of course, but which could have saved national (and listener) interest far better.
This would have entailed deciding on specialised radio stations. Say Hindi pop as one category. Western pop as another, then jazz, Indian classical, Western classical and so on.
The bids would obviously have been lower for some of these channels and overall the government''s wallet would have bulged a bit less, but think of the riches we would have!
But what to do? The government wants things to remain like that only.