As you all know that we had already entered the month of Love-February, and then we at SPINS are going to complete our 1 month of blogging in this very month. Isn’t that so amazing for us? It has been a complete rollercoaster ride for us as well as for you guys. On this very occasion we thought to do something new, something other than much appealing movies. So, this time we thought of taking you all back to those days when people used to get entertained by the medium which is portable (day by day becoming handy) and is very economic. Can you guys guess what is it?
Well, we won’t directly reveal the answer rather we will give you all a hint to think. So, what was the date yesterday? And what was the day called? Now, don’t think the day from the perspective of Valentines’ week. Just kidding. So, yesterday was 13th February and it is celebrated as WORLD RADIO DAY. Now all of us had got the answer, that what was the medium used then.
Previously, there were no televisions as the invention was made much more later. There were radios and with the beginning of the “Radio Era”, people used to get much more advantages as well as getting entertained. “Akashvani” was first used in the context of radio and was later adopted as All India Radio on-air name in 1957. The programs which had entertained the masses then were certain radio dramas, music shows, news bulletins, etc.
Radio dramas had created a great impact on the audiences as the visual aspect wasn’t there, leaving the space for speculations. The modulation of voice by the RJs and the storyline is all that had made the people to be enthusiast about it. The first radio drama was launched from the Kolkata station of AIR on the night of 3rd September of 1927. It was termed as “Micro-drama” by one of the researchers of radio plays broadcast to describe the programme. In the same year the Calcutta Amateur Theatrical Society had broadcast two English Language plays- “The Girl Who Wasn’t” by Ben Norton and “The Folly of George” by Mathew Bolton. The first radio play in Bengali is “Daye Pore Dargroho” written by Jyotirindra Thakur. Later radio dramas had been played in many languages like Sanskrit and Hindi as well.
Neither movies nor web series but still the essence of the radio dramas had always kept the audience hooked up to their channels. The art of listening was being celebrated the most. Today also there are people who love listening to the radio but thanks to our fast-moving life they aren’t able to lend their ears to the radio. As a result, the true aura of radio is slowly diminishing. Even then also the radio hasn’t lost its hopes as now the FM radio is already being made in-built in the mobile phones. The amazing RJs of nowadays have again succeeded in driving the attention of the masses towards the radio.
So on this World Radio Day, we at SPINS want to thanks all those Radio Jockeys out there who are delivering such an amazing content to us with an equally amazing enthusiasm. Thank you all for keeping the spirit of radio still alive among the masses and motivating more free souls to choose their path into this “mysterious” industry.
Contributed by: –
- Sarmistha Ghosh
- Sampurna Panigrahi
- Navdeep Kumar
- Pratyusha Das
- Ishika Das
SPINS 