Some habits that were with you in your early years seem to be the best for you, they give you a good feeling about yourself! One of such habits that I had in my teenage was to listen to the radio. Whenever I was at home, I used to turn on the radio. It was always a musical moment either I was getting ready for school or relaxing after school. And it was the sweetest thing to fall asleep while listening to the melodious songs at night!
But why am I writing all these when the post should be about crisis in life and how it helps you become the best?
This is because, today morning when I was listening to the FM (yes, no radio now!!), I had this sudden nostalgic feeling. I remembered my early days when I used to listen to radio (only Vividh Bharti and All India Radio were the saviors those days!) I suddenly started comparing the radio of yester-years with the FM of today.
I remembered, how there was a fix time for every type of songs that time. In the morning you got to listen devotional songs followed by news and an announcement of the time table of that day's programs, then came the programs of songs that included film music, non film music, some musical stories etc. And how before every song was played, the radio announcer (and not the glamorous RJs!) would tell the listeners the name of the film or the music album, singer, composer, and lyricist. And then, there were the special weekly programs like Binaca (later Cibaca) geet mala that mesmerized us with the magical voice of Amin Sayani! How good I felt thinking about all these, can't be explained in words!
And yes, let me tell you, this was all happening in the late 80s and the early 90s.
In my chain of thoughts, there came this sad moment when I lamented for not listening to the radio in the late 90s and early years of this century! Why on earth did that happen?
My trail of thoughts gave several reasons- May be, I got busy preparing for my career, may be the struggles of my life took me away from music, or may be, radio itself did not remain so attractive!
Yes, all of these had a part to play. But I never discarded watching TV in all these years? (Let me clarify, I don't watch that much TV but yes I am not a stranger to it too!)
With the advent of Televison, I thought, radio lost it's position of prime!
Not all people now depended solely on radio for entertainment. Picture with voice attracted them more now instead of only voice!
It was a period of crisis for radio. Just like it was a period of crisis for Cinema (thanks to yet another invention called VCR and the pirated videos as well as TV- after all, these three were needed to watch movies at home rather than in cinema halls!)
But then, all of them are still there. Radio has become FM. Cinema hall has become Multiplex. VCR has given way to DVD players. TV, of course, has remained TV, just that now you get those slim and trim LEDs and LCDs in place of the giant boxes!
Wait a minute! Didn't TV also change? Earlier it was only Doordarshan and some variants of DD. Now you can't even count the total numbers of channels available. How can you? You don't even see them all. In fact, human capacity doesn't allow to watch all these channels even if you try to do so!
TV, too has gone through a phase of crisis. When it made the cinema halls close down, Bollywood took the crisis as a challenge and changed its approach. The movie industry made the already bigger-than-life-cinema, even bigger! They gave you Multiplexes with an experience that can only be had in those luxurious buildings where they showed their spectacular movies with all types of facilities right at your comfortable seat!
These multiplexes brought a phase of crisis for TV. You see, what goes around, comes back to you! But TV industry was adamant. It introduced a host of other experiences- some live, some reality shows, some extraordinarily entertaining shows and yet others close to our lives (I never spelt serials!)
Now both TV and Cinema are surviving. In fact, they are surviving in the best possible ways. They have also become interdependent. They have understood, this is the only way to survive. They are giving the best of them. And we, as audience, are getting the best of both the worlds!
Stop! where did radio go? We were actually discussing it only, weren't we!
Not to say, Radio in its new avatar as FM has again made itself a part of our lives.
Pushed back by TV and Cinema, radio also gathered all its courage in the time of its crisis. It understood, people want excitement, they want engagement, they want connection and yes they also want music but not in that boring style of yesterday.
Thus, now we have Radio Jockeys (a lucrative career option for many who just love to talk!)
We have fans of these RJs who tune into their favorite FM channels at specific times. You can find people listening to FM while driving down their daily office route. You can see young and old wearing their headphones while traveling in the buses, trains and metros, thanks to the mobile companies who never forget to include FM in there cellphones! After all, it is the question of the survival of cell phone companies too!
And as a welcome change, FM is just not entertaining us like the old days' radio, it is touching our lives. The Radio Jockeys are actually engaging people socially. These RJs have partly assumed a role of media too. They question politicians, they communicate with the heroes in every field, they connect people with each other, and not to forget, they also play music, sometimes (or most of the times) on the demand of their audience!
Yes, crisis does bring in the best of us! Cinema has proved this. TV has proved this. And yes, Radio, no, FM has also proved this!
It's time for me to have some musical treat now!
No comments:
Post a Comment