All India Radio

All India Radio (abbreviated as AIR), officially known as Akashvani (Devanagari: आकाशवाणी, ākāshavānī) (Urdu : اکاشوانی), 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. Established in 1936, [ [http://allindiaradio.org/about1.html About us] Official website. allindiaradio.org. "Retrieved:2008-08-03".] , today, 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 the Akashwani Bhavan, New Delhi. 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.

During his regular broadcasts from the Azad Hind Radio, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose used to refer to the pre-independence AIR as "Anti Indian Radio".

ervices

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"). Vividh Bharati celebrated its Golden Jubilee on 3 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). 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.

East regional service

:"Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_er.html"
*Bhagalpur 1458 kHz
*Cuttack 'A' 972 kHz
*Darbhanga 1296 kHz
*Jamshedpur 1544kHs
*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 http://kolkatarjratings.blogspot.com

North-east regional service

:"Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_ner.html"
*Agartala 1269 kHz
*Guwahati 'A' 729 kHz
*Shillong 864 kHz

West regional service

:"Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_wr.html"
*Ahmedabad 'A' 86.7 MHz
*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

outh regional service

:"Full list: http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/freq_sr.html"
*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
*"'Tirunelveli 1197 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
*Varanasi 'B' 1602 kHz
*Varanasi FM' 100.6 MHz
*Vijayawada 'B' 1503 kHz
*Vividh Bharati' 9870 kHz (Ex. 10330 kHz) / Power: 500 kW via Bangalor Transmitters / Broadcasting from Mumbai Studios: 0025-0435 + 0900-1200 + 1245-1740 UTC. The best Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu-Mix) Program in the whole World.

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 7 pm. 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 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/index_regional.htm.

External links

* [http://www.allindiaradio.org/ All India Radio Official web-site]
* [http://www.allindiaradio.org/schedule/fqsch.html AIR's Frequency schedule]
* [http://www.radioworld.co.nr Hindi RadioWorld]
* [http://radio.kaulonline.com/ Indian Radio Stations Worldwide]
* [http://childrensection.tripod.com/ Children's wing of All India Radio]
* [http://RadioStationIndia.com/ Live indian radio channels]
* [http://www.Radioez.com/ Online Radio in Hindi, Tamil and more.]

References