One of the biggest sources of happiness for me these days is derived from driving in the road listening to the radio. I consider myself privileged to be living in a city where I understand the local language, know quite a bit about its culture and most critically - enjoy the city's music. The buzz of a new day greets you in the morning - and aptly so. Tuning into Radio One's (94.3) breakfast show with Suchi is a tonic for me early in the morning. Her voice, delivery, class and charm are unmatched in my opinion and she keeps me glued to that channel when songs are not playing. Humor is available in liberal quantities in some of the channels targeted at the masses - Suriyan FM (93.5) most notably and it is pretty enjoyable - and more enjoyable than I initially thought. However in terms of content and presentation of programmes in the morning session I am very impressed with Radio City (91.1). The morning hosts are extremely efficient with their words, and hardly rant on for more than necessary. Particularly impressive in her RJing is Chinmayee for Aaha FM (91.9), and I wonder if she has a role in selecting the songs played during her show - the songs are of a higher standard than other channels. Imagine - they played "Isayil thodangudhamma" at 9am one day.
Overall though there clearly seems to be a focus on peppy and popular music in the morning session - and that is reflected across Channels. Features like traffic update, city news add to the nativity - much to my delight. The evening programming is more content based and targets specific segments of the listeners. Of the evening programmes - Rahmania hosted by Rehana is impressive but gets too repetitive given the limited number of songs that can be played. Songs like Aadi paaru mangaatha can be heard almost daily - this makes it irritating at times.
Anyway - here is a quick summary of my rating for each channel :
Mirchi (98.3) seems to have lost the plot a bit. I do not get any associations attached to the channel these days. The RJs are not of the highest quality and the programming is not unique.
Aaha is good in patches with its Breakfast show with Chinmayee and the Rahmania show. The programme after 9 pm that plays Ilayaraja songs is very good too. Otherwise - its positioning doesn't seem too clear to me.
Suriyan FM is a truly mass channel and it scores with its clarity in positioning. They stick to playing popular music and are good at it.
Radio One seems to give me the feeling that Suchi is wasting her time there. It seems to be a mass channel like Hello FM 106.4, but might never match Suriyan FM.
Hello FM has a big problem. It has the channel at 106.4, and is too far from other channels. Also adding to the difficulty of getting there are some government channels and one english channel after 98.3 Mirchi. Programming and content are OK - it is another mass channel and nothing more.
BIG FM (92.7) is impressive. Its content seems to be engrossing. However, I need to listen to them a bit more to understand how they are different from Mirchi of the past.
The clear winner in my opinion is Radio City. They have a youth focus and are very sophisticated. Their programming on VDay was fabulous - the top 150 love songs were pretty spot on. The channel intelligently shares content with their other city stations and has English music hours and Hindi music hours like Aaha which also has a Hindi Music programme. All in all, an intelligent channel.
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6 comments:
finishing...what a post...what a useful post...brilliant...
its all not jus immediately after reading this post...this build-up has been happenin over some time now...KALAKKARA da J...pedal.
what hit me immediately was this comparison with Susi Ganesan: avlo pseud guys both - kaattu brainies - and most imp-ly for me, applyin their brains to, the things arnd them...their observations, etc...
TOP DRAW stuff really...And thnx a million for sharing info/observations...
ps: good u ve taggd this entry
@BK - Thanks da. Felt good to know that the post was useful. I need to analyze these channels a bit more. I can hopefully add to the content / revise some remarks after that.
you could have given the station specifics da... the tuning freq also... hat would have made the post complete in info.
anyway... good pointers... you made me listen to radio today! :P
@Makki - added frequencies.
Gay Bastard...
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