Loud & Clear

You hear it day in and night out. On the road, in the house, across the street...there’s a radio playing somewhere in the background.

Initiating a new trend in radio programming, students from eight city schools are voicing issues on air

You hear it day in and night out. On the road, in the house, across the street…there’s a radio playing somewhere in the background. And with the airwaves expanding with FM, there’s so much more now to hear. But if you thought it was all about entertainment and back-to-back Bollywood chart busters, here’s something fresh and buzzing. “Today, dramas form the main entertaining component of films and television shows. We thought of taking forth the drama element on to radio as well,” tells S P Singh, CEO of Institute of Radio Jockeying (IRJ) who has initiated a new trend of radio FM programming, one that brings in young voices. “We conducted the first ever inter-school radio drama competition sometime back and we were really impressed with the talent and also the content,” says Singh who finds the youth “really tuning in”. “It’s all the more important then that the content be both entertaining as well as educative,” says Singh who has designed the event with an “aim to improvise radio programmes” by exploring talent amongst students and then training them.

Now with eight school teams in the final round, each Sunday will see one team, comprising of eight students, present a radio-drama on All India Radio’s Chandigarh FM station. The lineup includes Kundan International School, St John’s High School, Gian Jyoti Public School, DAV Model School -15, Mount Carmel, Sacred Heart, Chaman Lal DAV School, Panchkula and Bhavan Vidhyalaya, Panchkula. The first Sunday (November 16) saw the team from St John’s go on air on AIR FM 103.1 and 107.2. “It was so nice to hear my voice. My friends have been calling me up ever since,” spoke a visibly excited Vaibhav Rakheja, a student of class IX from St John’s who went through rehearsals and even voice modulation capsules. Interestingly, the schools were asked to write dramas on moral and cultural values or those based on syllabus lessons. “Then we conducted training workshops for the various school teams at our institute before the final drama was recorded,” Singh pitches in with the details.

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What’s more, the various teams have touched upon issues such as ‘Brain Drain’, ‘Female Foeticide’, ‘Terrorism’, ‘Communal Harmony’, ‘Environment in 2050’ and the likes. “Radio is very far reaching today and we thought of a radio drama as a novel way to get a message across. The best part is that the students had fun putting it all together,” remarked Urvashi Kakkar, the teacher in-charge of the Bhavan Vidhyalaya team comprising students from classes VIII to X. “We chose the theme ‘Brain Drain’, the script for which was written by the students themselves,” informs Kakkar.

And all that hard work will be bringing in more than just a pat on the back. “Since we have designed it like a contest, listeners have to SMS their votes in the form of ratings from 1 to 10. A panel of judges and the listeners’ votes will decide the rankings in the end,” explains Singh who mentions prizes worth Rs 50,000 up for grabs to be given by participating sponsors. Apart from a final winner, there will be prizes for Best Story, Best Actor, Best Voice et al. The radio-dramas can be heard every Sunday morning at 10:30 am on AIR FM 107.2 and 103.1 till January 4.

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