Information about All India Radio

All India Radio (AIR for short), officially known as Akashvani (Devanagari: आकाशवाणी, ākāshvānī) is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India), an autonomous corporation of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. It is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster.

All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks in the world. The headquarters is at Akashwani Bhavan, on the Parliament Street next to the Indian parliament. Akashwani Bhavan houses the drama section, the FM section and the National service. The Doordarshan Kendra (Delhi) is also located on the 6^th floor of Akashvani Bhavan.

History

India's first radio station was established by the Radio Club of Bombay in 1923. Two privately owned transmitters at Mumbai and Calcutta, established in 1927, were nationalised by the British Raj in 1930 and operated under the name Indian Broadcasting Service until 1936, when it was renamed All India Radio (AIR). AIR was officially renamed to Akashwani in 1957, however all English usage refers to it as All India Radio.

In the era of government control, All India Radio was known for taking an overwhelmingly government line. Indira Gandhi famously stated in 1975 that All India Radio is "a Government organ, it is going to remain a Government organ..."^[1]

Despite the growth of private radio channels since the 1990s, All India Radio (AIR) remains a popular media resource, being accessible even in the remotest parts of the country.

Coverage

The All India Radio website claims that the station reaches 99.37% of India's populace of over one billion. AIR maintains approximately 225 broadcasting centres around the country including one in the capital of every state, a total of 384 channels and transmits in 24 different languages and dialects. In spite of recent penetration by other media such as Cable TV, AIR remains the most common means of gaining access to information and entertainment, as the radio receivers are relatively cheap and affordable.

AIR in popular Culture

Broadcasting House is an old building next to Akashwani Bhavan. The News Service Division of All India Radio under the Director General (New) functions from this building. Built during the British rule, it is a very popular location and easily recognised building in New Delhi.

Several scenes of Dil Se, a popular Bollywood film starring Shahrukh Khan, were shot in and around this building; in the film Khan plays a reporter for All India Radio. All India Radio also featured prominently in the film Rang De Basanti.

Services

AIR has many different services each catering to different regions/languages across India. One of the most famous services of the AIR is the Vividh Bharati Seva (roughly translating to "Multi-Indian service"). This service is the most commercial of all and is popular in Mumbai and other cities of India. This service offers a wide range of programmes including news, film music, comedy shows, etc. The Vividh Bharti service operates on different MW band frequencies for each city as shown below.

Some programs broadcast on the Vividh Bharti:

• Hawa-mahal - Skit based on some novels/plays.
• Santogen ki mehfil - Jokes & humour.

The following is a partial list of AIR services.

North regional service

Full list: [1]

• Agra 1530 kHz
• Allahabad 1026 kHz
• Delhi 'Indraprastha' 819 kHz
• Delhi 'Rajdhani' 666 kHz
• Delhi 'D' 1017 kHz
• Jaipur 'A' 1476 kHz
• Jalandhar 'A' 873 kHz
• Jammu 'A' 990 kHz
• Jodhpur 'A' 531 kHz
• Lucknow 'A' 747 kHz
• Srinagar 'A' 1116 kHz
• Varanasi 'A' 1242 kHz

East regional service

Full list: [2]

• Bhagalpur 1458 kHz
• Cuttack 'A' 972 kHz
• Darbhanga 1296 kHz
• Jamshedpur 1584 kHz
• Kolkata 'A' 657 kHz
• Kolkata 'B' 1008 kHz
• Kolkata 'C' 1323 kHz
• Patna 'A' 621 kHz
• Ranchi 'A' 549 kHz
• '''AIR FM Kolkata has two stations 107FM Rainbow and 100.2FM Gold.

These stations broadcast live programmes in Bangla, English and Hindi. See [3]

North-east regional service

Full list: [4]

• Agartala 1269 kHz
• Guwahati 'A' 729 kHz
• Shillong 864 kHz

West regional service

Full list: [5]

• Ahmedabad 'A' 846 kHz
• Aurangabad 1521 kHz
• Bhopal 'A' 1593 kHz
• Gwalior 1386 kHz
• Indore 'A' 648 kHz
• Jalgaon 963 kHz
• Mumbai 'A' 1044 kHz
• Mumbai 'B' 558 kHz
• Nagpur 'A' 585 kHz
• Panaji 'A' 1287 kHz
• Pune 'A' 792 kHz
• Rajkot 'A' 810 kHz
• Ratnagiri 1143 kHz
• Sholapur 1602 kHz
• Sangli 1251 kHz

South regional service

Full list: [6]

• Adilabad 1485 kHz
• Bangalore 'A' 612 kHz
• Chennai 'A' 720 kHz
• Gulbarga 1107 kHz
• Hyderabad 'A' 738 kHz
• Hyderabad 'B' 1377 kHz
• Kozhikode 'A' 684 kHz
• Madurai 1269 kHz
• Ootakamund 1602 kHz
• Pondicherry 1215 kHz
• Port Blair 684 kHz
• Thiruvananthapuram 'A' 1161 kHz
• Tiruchirapalli 'A' 936 kHz
• Vijayawada 'A' 837 kHz
• Visakhapatnam 927 kHz

Vividh Bharati service

• Chennai 'C' 783 kHz
• Cuttack 'B' 1314 kHz
• Delhi 'C' 1368 kHz
• Hyderabad 'C 102.8 MHz
• Jalandhar 'C' 1350 kHz
• Kanpur 1449 kHz
• Kolkata 'C' 1323 kHz
• Lucknow 'C' 1278 kHz
• Mumbai 'C' 1188 kHz
• Panaji 'B' 1539 kHz
• Vijayawada 'B' 1503 kHz
• Varanasi 'B' 1602 kHz
• Varanasi FM' 100.6 MHz

External services

The External Services Division of All India Radio broadcasts in 27 languages to countries outside of India, primarily by high powered Short wave broadcasts although Medium wave is also used to reach neighbouring countries. In addition to broadcasts targeted at specific countries by language there is a General Overseas Service which broadcasts in English with 8 1/4 hours of programming each day and is aimed at a general international audience.

Yuv-vani: The voice of youth

The Yuv-vani service of AIR provides an enriching and novel radio-experience by encouraging youth participation and experimenting with varied script ideas.It is broadcast at 1017 kHz which corresponds to 294.9 meter. Its Broadcast begins every evening at 7pm. With shows like "Mehfil", "In the groove" and "The Roving Microphone" which have been around for more than three decades, Yuv-vani still holds a firm ground of its own.

Some of the big names on the Indian media scene began their journey with Yuv-vani. Comments Praful Thakkar, a well known documentary maker - "Yuv-vani came as a breath of fresh air in our reckless college days. It was a great learning experience for me and it made me realize that radio is not all about goofy quotes and PJs."

Some of the other names that have been associated with Yuv-vani in the past include Celebrity game show host Roshan Abbas, VJ Gaurav Kapoor, DJ Kaushal Khanna and DJ Pratham among others.

News-on-phone service

All India Radio, after launching the news-on-phone service on 25^th February 1998 from New Delhi, is running the service from Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Patna and Bangalore also. The service is accessible through STD, ISD and local telephone calls. The service is going to be started from 9 more cities — Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Imphal, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Raipur, Simla and Thiruvanthapuram shortly.

English and Hindi hourly news bulletins can be heard live on [7] The news in MP3 format can be directly played from the site. In the file name the hourly time of news is mentioned. Text of the English and Hindi bulletins can be read from [8]

AIR news bulletins are available in 9 regional languages (Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, North East, Punjabi, Telugu, Urdu) from [9]

External links

• All India Radio web-site
• AIR's Frequency schedule
• Hindi RadioWorld
• Indian Radio Stations Worldwide
• India Radio

Trivia

• Vividh Bharati celebrated its Golden Jubilee on 3rd October 2007.
• Vividh Bharati has the only comprehensive database of songs from the so termed "Golden Era" of Hindi film music (roughly from 1940s to 1980s).

References

2. Broadcasters and Writers for AIR Lucknow: Swapnil Bhartiya