{"id":871,"date":"2009-09-09T10:58:54","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T05:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wokay.in\/?p=871"},"modified":"2009-09-09T10:58:54","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T05:28:54","slug":"all-india-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2009\/09\/09\/all-india-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"All India Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Samar Halarnkar is pissed off that Indian FM radio stations only play Bollywood songs and puerile PJs (a sentiment I share to some extent) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/News\/columnsothers\/The-music-is-back\/Article1-450991.aspx\">proposes a solution in the Hindustan Times &#8211; putting AIR on steroids<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>AIR has found fans like me \u2014 though let me confess that before I \u2018discovered\u2019 AIR, I was quite addicted to a radio spot in Mumbai called \u2018Kamla ka hamla\u2019, the random outpourings of a fast-talking transvestite \u2014 not because of a grand plan to counter the explosion of private radio but because it is a public broadcaster that is not beholden to the demands of the mass market.<\/p>\n<p>Ideally, public-service radio must give voice to and reflect the needs of democracy\u2019s silent majorities and minorities. It cannot be left entirely to the whimsical flick of a few hundred million wrists. \u201cBroadcasting,\u201d as Tony Benn, a British socialist politician once observed, \u201cis really too important to be left to the broadcasters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>An AIR with vision and verve could lead India\u2019s radio revival. Imagine if it became a National Public Radio, the wonderful public-radio network in the US. There are many like us, waiting for lively, intelligent radio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So because Samar Halarnkar is too cheap to buy an iPod and download podcasts (or a Worldspace receiver for that matter), the taxpayers of India must shell out their money to revamp AIR and the brightest people in government must go build a vision and verve for public radio instead of, oh I dunno, fixing the university system or conducting police reform or something.<\/p>\n<p>For this he gets paid to be a columnist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Samar Halarnkar is pissed off that Indian FM radio stations only play Bollywood songs and puerile PJs (a sentiment I share to some extent) and proposes a solution in the Hindustan Times &#8211; putting AIR on steroids. AIR has found fans like me \u2014 though let me confess that before I \u2018discovered\u2019 AIR, I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,10,18,24],"tags":[435,689,954,1019,1508,1683,1786,1936],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charlatans","category-divine-arguments","category-infrastructure","category-msm","tag-cheap-guy","tag-does-he-even-know-about-radio-license-fees","tag-he-can-move-to-goa-or-bangalore-and-put-radio-indigo","tag-i-still-miss-rj-malavika","tag-national-public-radio","tag-podcast","tag-radio","tag-samar-halarnkar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-e3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}