Overview

All India Radio (AIR for short) 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. Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) was established on November 23, 1997 following a demand that the electronic media in India should be made free from the Government control and given autonomy in their functioning. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Doordarshan (दूरदर्शन) is a public broadcast terrestrial television channel run by Prasar Bharati, a board nominated by the Government of India. ...

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 6^th 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.

Trivia: Several scenes of the popular Shah Ruk Khan starrer movie Dil Se were shot in and around this building.

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 Ākāshvānī (आकाशवाणी) in 1957, it is still popularly known as All India Radio. 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Antenna tower of Crystal Palace transmitter, London A transmitter (sometimes abbreviated XMTR) is an electronic device which with the aid of an antenna propagates an electromagnetic signal such as radio, television, or other telecommunications. ... Mumbai (Hindi / Marathi: मुंबई) (pronounced in Marathi, and in English), formerly known as Bombay is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, and is the most populous Indian city, with a estimated population of about 18 million (2005). ... This article is on Calcutta/Kolkata, the city. ... 1930 (MCMXXX) is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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. This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Cable television or Community Antenna Television (CATV) (and often shortened to cable) is a system of providing television, FM radio programming and other services to consumers via radio waves transmitted directly to people’s televisions through fixed coaxial cables as opposed to the over-the-air method used in traditional... The word receiver has a number of different meanings: In communications and information processing, a receiver is the recipient (observer) of a message (information), which is sent from a source (object). ...

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 Bharti Seva" (roughly translating to "Multi-Indian service"). This service is the most commercial of all and is popular in Mumbai and other metropolitan cities of India. This service offers a wide range of programmes including news, film music, comedy shows, etc. Vividh Bharti operates on the MW band frequency of 1188 kHz on station Mumbai 'C'.
Some programs broadcast on the Vividh Bharti:
Mumbai (Hindi / Marathi: मुंबई) (pronounced in Marathi, and in English), formerly known as Bombay is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, and is the most populous Indian city, with a estimated population of about 18 million (2005). ...

• Binaca geet mala (later renamed to Cibaca geet mala) - featuring Hindi film songs.
• Hawa-mahal - skit based on some novels/plays
• Santogen ki mehfil - jokes

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 it's 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, DJ Pratham and Delhi based emcee Kshitij Sharma 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 and Patna also. The service is accessible through STD, ISD and local telephone calls. The service is going to be started from 10 more cities — Ahmedabad, Banglore, 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. MPEG Audio Layer-3, or more commonly refered to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardized in 1991 by a team of engineers working in the framework of the ISO/IEC MPEG audio committee under the chairmanship of Professor Hans Musmann (University...

Now listen to AIR news bulletins 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)

External links

• http://www.allindiaradio.org/ - All India Radio web-site.
• http://www.newsonair.com/ Live news bulletins in English, Hindi and 9 other regional languages from All India Radio.
• http://www.freewebs.com/biswadipmitra/ - Private site about Calcutta (Kolkata) radio.