Radio in India

When I was growing up, when AIR had a monopoly over the airwaves, we used to turn to shortwave. I still remember the pleasures of listening to Voice of America or the BBC, or even South African Broadcast Corp. Those days, radios were classified according to the no of bands - a 2 band radio meant one MW (or AM), and one SW band. A 5 band radio would mean 4 SW bands, in addition to MW. It used to be a challenge listening to some of the distant stations, and one often resorted to improvised tricks like making one's own antenna out of clotheslines and such.

I am sad that these days one couldn't buy a radio with SW bands even if one tries hard. These days, invariably all radios have only two bands, AM and FM. If I ask for a radio with SW, the salespeople (who are normally kids in their 20's) look puzzled or even laugh at you.

It is surprising that no one regrets this. Back in those days, even though AIR had a monopoly over news dissemination, one could always tune into these foreign stations, to get a balanced view. But now with SW essentially gone for good, we have AIR having a monopoly over news for all practical purposes.

The current crop of FM stations feature RJs playing the same tracks, and remixes that are mutilated versions of the originals. To me the presenter (the term I prefer over an RJ) should be transparent, and that is the way it was either with AIR or the other foreign stations. But now it seems like the RJs somehow feel they should thrust themselves and their bloated egos over and above the content they present. The sad part is, the mainstream audience has already bought into this crap, something that has been blindly copied from the US. Instead of being curt and politely informing the audience what they are listening to, they keep yakking about irrelevant stuff like a teenager at a birthday party.

Even the station signature featuring the frequency (91.9 FM) instead of something like Madras A and Madras B that I grew up with. We copy everything as it is done in the US, including the colour of school buses.

I once felt globalisation was great, but stuff like this really scares the hell out of me. To me this is not globalisation, but Americanisation.