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All India Radio

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For the electronica band, see All India Radio (band)
Contents

Overview

All India Radio (AIR for short), officially known as Akashwani (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 6th floor of Akashwani Bhavan.

Broadcasting house is an old building next to Akashwani Bhavan. The New 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.

History

Radio broadcasting began in India in 1927, with two privately-owned transmitters at Mumbai and Calcutta. These were nationalised in 1930 and operated under the name Indian Broadcasting Service until 1936, when it was renamed All India Radio (AIR). Although officially renamed again to Akashwani in 1957, it is still popularly known as All India Radio All India Radio (AIR) is still the most popular media, considering the fact that it is assessible even in the remotest parts of our country where any other media like tv or newspapers cannot reach. Today there are all types of programmes braodcasted on AIR. Although there is tough competition with the new upcomming private chaanels, AIR has introduced new channels to offer options to listeners like music, news, drama, sports etc

Coverage

AIR covers 99.37% of India's populace, the largest democracy in the world with over one billion inhabitants. AIR maintains approximately 200 broadcasting centres around the country and transmits in 24 different languages. 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.

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:

The following is a partial list of AIR services.

North regional service

Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_nr.html

East regional service

Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_er.html

North-east regional service

Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_ner.html

West regional service

Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_wr.html

South regional service

Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_sr.html

Vividh Bharati service

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. 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 25th 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 http://www.newsonair.com. 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 http://www.newsonair.com/BulletinsInd.html.

AIR news bulletins are available in 9 regional languages (Tamil, Kannada,Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, North East, Punjabi, Telugu, Urdu) from http://www.newsonair.com/regional.html.

News-on-phone access numbers in India are:

  1. Chennai: 044-2467 1111/1258 (Tamil), 044-2467 2222/1258 (Tamil)
  2. Delhi: 011-2332 4242/1258 (Hindi), 011-2332 4343/1259 (English)
  3. Mumbai: 022-2281 7009/1259 (Marathi), 022-2281 5420/1258 (Hindi)
  4. Hyderabad: 040-2324 4343/1259 (Telugu)
  5. Patna: 0612-220 7621 (Hindi)
  6. Bangalore: 080-22377525 / 1258 (Kannada), 080-22377530 / 1259 (English)

External links

References

[AIR's Frequency schedule]

 

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