6:30 AM: Rahul gets up from bed. The weather’s cool outside and it gets his mood going. While readying for college he switches on the FM. But then something goes wrong, the station is playing the same Hindi song, he changes it and there too another Hindi movie song. Change after change, shuffle after shuffle, but alas he hears the same songs that he hears everyday- the same dull, drab Bollywood. Rahul turns off the radio in irritation. In a matter of minutes, his mood has changed from good to bad!
Well, not only Rahul, it can be your or mine story too. We at times feel irritated and over fed by the FM radio. Tell me how many times can you listen to the same songs over and over again? Whether it is the new ones or old songs, it’s Bollywood all over FM radio in India. And to add to it, you have those gyrating DJs blabbering drab and dull bullshits. The FM, it seems will never be able to get out of the boundary of Bollywood and think otherwise. And this is where it lacks behind the radio culture of other nations. I doubt how many programmes are aired on the FM channels, apart from Bollywood, Bollywood and Bollywood? Hardly few!
According to popular singer and composer Remo Fernandes, the FM channels here still have a long way to go to match the channels in western countries. There you have different stations for different music genres- if you like rock, you can turn on the rock stations, while if you like classical you can switch on to the similar ones. That’s how radio should be, but here its all absent, he laments. His concerns are echoed by real music buffs (not those stupid Bollywood music fans), who are sick and tired of listening to depth less Hindi film music. The situation is so under developed that you will only find a handful of regional FM stations.
Yes, our good old All India Radio does play a variety of music programmes, starting from talk shows to classical ones. But then there you have other problems (often illogical ones). Suddenly in the middle of a song, the news starts or an advertisement springs out of nowhere (which the human brain is incapable to understand). The result: your whole enjoyment is marred.
Sadly, FM radio, being one of the major mediums of urban mass entertainment, is still in its embryonic stage. To be a perfect entertainment medium, it needs to shed the Bollywood image and act beyond that.
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