Loud and Clear

With the radio,you are never alone. You hear it on your way to work,in the house,across the streetno matter where you are,there is a radio playing somewhere in the background. With the airwaves expanding with FM,there is much more to hear.

Community radio is providing children a platform to express themselves

With the radio,you are never alone. You hear it on your way to work,in the house,across the streetno matter where you are,there is a radio playing somewhere in the background. With the airwaves expanding with FM,there is much more to hear.

But these days,radio is not just limited to belting out back-to-back Bollywood chart busters and intermittent chatter,and a lot of fresh and buzzing programmes also involve children.

Tune into Vivek 90.4FM,Chandigarhs first community radio station and one is pleasantly surprised. From travel trips to nuggets of information on healthy cooking,spiritual talk to career counseling,a wholesome package is being aired. Interestingly,nearly 80 per cent of the programming is managed by students of Vivek High School,Sector 38. Students from nursery upwards are involved, says station head Manmeet Sodhi. The students pitch in as script writers,anchors and musicians. Since it is a community radio,we do not play music all day long, adds Sodhi,as Gagandeep Singh,a Class X student,goes on air to host a travel show Sair Sapata. For the show,the young anchor took listeners to Pondicherry,with the bilingual script not just informative but packaged in an entertaining way.

We are on air from four in the morning to eleven at night. But most of the programmes are pre-recorded, says Sodhi who finds students eager to explore new topics and come up with ideas to make the community talk more engaging.

Buoyed by the enthusiasm,SP Singh,director of the Sector 35-based Institute of Radio Jockeying (IRJ) has started Radio Masters,an inter-school radio drama competition. Drama forms the main entertainment component of films and television shows. We thought of taking forward that element to radio as well, says Singh who has designed the event with an aim to improvise radio programmes by exploring talented students and then training them.

Into its second edition,the response to Radio Masters has been overwhelming with 14 school team from the region participating in the contest held this month. The theme was environment and IRJ trained students in workshops conducted in every school, informs Singh. The school teams wrote out their own scripts and then recorded and edited them in the IRJ recording studio. We had a senior panel to judge the radio dramas and Bhavan Vidyalaya from Sector 15,Panchkula won the first place in the senior category while Gurukul Global School were the winners in the juniors category, says Singh.

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The first three selected dramas in each category will now be broadcast on AIR Rainbow FM 107.2 every evening from 7:45 pm to 8 pm,starting March 25. Further all dramas will be broadcast for five times each on the internet radio http://www.radiochandigarh.com from April 10 onwards. For the students,its a new high altogether. Its fun to hear your own voice on the radio, chirps Aksh who was part of the winning team from Bhavan Vidyalaya.

Also making their presence felt every Sunday afternoon on My 94.3 FM are students from the tri-city. The show,called Chhota RJ,is steered by a bunch of enthusiastic children and the stations own RJ Manav. The show is popular and we are inundated with requests by students who send in their entries, informs the MY FMs programming head Sundeep Tyagi. Students send in briefs to the radio station informing about their hobbies,achievements and favourite shows,following which a lucky few are selected to come for the two-hour show. The children are encouraged to write their own scripts. Its our way of building a rapport with the younger generation as well as their family and friends, sums up Tyagi.

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Loud and Clear

With the radio,you are never alone. You hear it on your way to work,in the house,across the streetno matter where you are,there is a radio playing somewhere in the background. With the airwaves expanding with FM,there is much more to hear.

With the radio,you are never alone. You hear it on your way to work,in the house,across the streetno matter where you are,there is a radio playing somewhere in the background. With the airwaves expanding with FM,there is much more to hear.