Skip to main content

Have people forgotten amplitude modulation?

I loathe FM. Not the technology per se but the way it is used. FM's greatest fault: people have forgotten AM. FM's other fault: programs aired over it hardly have any distinctive identity. Anyone with a certain way with words will make do for a host.

Speak crap, dangle the proverbial carrot in the form of free tickets or gift vouchers and people will surely fall for it. Occasionally get the brain dead audience revved up to air views on pressing issues and see their concerns shoot through the roof as each one tries to outdo the other in coming up with a brilliant solution...something the rest of mankind was oblivious to until now. The reward: 20 seconds of ephemeral fame as the world (limited to your city) suddenly discovers your brilliance.

And who can forget SMS? Send your requests to 4141 as long as you are requesting only for a recent hit that everyone has already heard at least a zillion times. No Keith Jarrett, Boots Randolph or Rosemary Clooney. No jazz, no bluegrass and certainly nothing Celtic. AM was so much better. It was so much fun surfing the waves from Radio Moscow or Radio Australia. And I needn't even mention BBC or VOA. Whatever happened to those days?

I'm sure a hypothetical Hell would have been perpetually tuned into one of our FM stations.

Comments

Vivek said…
The GoI allows private FM players to air only general entertainment programmes. There is actually a restriction in place which prevents them from venturing into news/discussions/current affairs & the like.

As such, the only way for them to recover the huge licence fees & turn profitable is to jump onto the songs/SMS brigade.

Expect the situation to remain so for some more time before the GoI sees the light or the market matures (as it happened with cable TV).
Deepanjan said…
I remember listening to FM in Kolkata many years ago. Though music was still the only turf, it wasn't nearly so bad.

Ya, the GoI imposed restrictions defy common sense and impede growth. I wonder what sense prevails in the corridors of babudom.

I remember coming across the ridiculous restrictions the GoI had imposed on private FM players. That they manage to thrive at all is a miracle in itself.

Popular posts from this blog

This is what Bertrand Russell said about religion...

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. ... A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

The year that was

I'm wearing a rather striking shirt, one that makes me feel like a clown fooling around in a graveyard. Roving eyes latch on to me and make me too conscious of myself. Checkered in red, grey, black and maroon, I've excused myself into donning it and looking silly for two reasons. It's Friday and…more importantly, the last working day of the year. Tailored half-a-year back, I never had the courage to wear it, not until today. It's that time of the year when it's time to reflect on the events that transpired. Last year ended on the worst possible note. Dad had expired and I was numb with shock. The repercussions rippled halfway thought this year. Things were so abysmal initially that I had lost the will to live. Acrid in everything I did, I was immensely angered by time phlegmatically flowing through its cadence. It was as if Dad meant nothing to anybody. What right did people have to live the way they always had when Dad was no more? Why was much of the world still