Author: Anshuman Rawat

So you stood in long queues for giving your audition for RJ but did not get selected? Well, big deal. Even Amitabh Bachchan was not short-listed by All India Radio. Consider yourself in good company and get into a radio station through some other door!

Yes, in all the hype and hoopla surrounding the job of an RJ, we tend to forget the a career with radio is much more than merely being an RJ. Though, one must confess, RJ-ing rocks! 🙂

A career in radio can see you in any of the following – marketing (hardcore sales to strategy planning), content development (writing scripts for Rjs to creating radio jingles),  engineering (from sound engineering to computer networking) and of course, presentation and announcing (RJ-in). With more than 300 new licenses being awarded to mor than 30 private broadcasters in 91 cities all over India, radio is all set to provide more options than there ever were in the field.

Figure this one out: If the around 300 new radio stations require an average of about 5,000 content hours per radio station per year, there would be a demand of content for 15 Lakh content hours per year by the radio industry! Where is it going to come from? From thousands of creative persons – writers, thinkers, planners, singers, recordists etc – that would need to be hired by the industry.

15 lakh content hours per year would need to be sold to people and advertisers. That would require MBAs and sales whiz-kids.

According to industry estimates, a typical RJ gets a starting pay of Rs 20,000 p.m. – though it depends on the city. A Mumbai RJ would get more than an RJ in Ahmedabad, who in turn would get slightly more than that of Vadodara. Later on, the popular and experienced RJs get around Rs 70,000 to 1 lakh a month in big cities. RJs of smaller cities get around 25-30% less than that.

Similarly, freshers in the production department start at around Rs 20,000 p.m. But if you manage to rise your way up to being the ‘Station Head’, you can hope to earn anywhere between 1 to 3 lakhs – subject of course to experience and performance! 1 to 3 lakhs, whoa!

The base of listeners grew from virtually 0 to about 70% today. Since the listener base is directly correlated to the advertising revenues of radio stations, advertisers are eager to tap this local audience base.
Radio companies, in turn, are hoping to grow from niche-advertising revenues.

As compared to television commercials, radio commercials are relatively economical to produce. Owing to this, advertisers are able to make several creative ads catering to different cities, different day-parts and different brand objectives – and still manage cost-effectiveness.

Most of your current radio heart-throbs probably came without any formal training. But today, there are institutes coming up to train you for a career in radio.

RadioActive Pvt. Ltd, a venture by radio veterans Brian Tellis and Erica D’Souza, offers certificate courses Radio Management-Programming, and Radio Presentation and Announcing. The venture is in collaboration with Xaviers Institute of Communication (XIC), Mumbai.

The syllabus and content has been designed by RadioActive, while XIC will provide the necessary infrastructure and resources. The total duration for each course is 150 hours, distributed over 3-hour lectures, thrice a week and the fees is Rs. 50,000. (Please check the institute for latest figures. League is a mere messenger of information.)

But the other major player – and arguably a much bigger setup – in the field of training for radio is Roshan Abbas’ EMDI Encompass Institute of Radio Management.

It offers a one-year Post Graduate Diploma in Radio Management (PGDRM) (Rs. 40,000), and a three-month part time Certificate in Radio Jockeying (CRJ) (Rs. 30,000).

Want to find out more about them? We’re giving you the contact details of the two here:

Radioactive Pvt. Ltd. (In collaboration with XIC):
Tel: (022) 22621366 / 22621369
Email: contact@radioactive.co.in

EMDI Encompass Institute of Radio Management:
Tel: (022) 26550808 / 26427171
http://www.teachradio.com
Email :info@teachradio.com

However, as in falling over each other to get a certificate in computer  or design courses, the risk lies in the fact that in human intensive industries (where the talent of human beings means more than the ability of machines) like entertainment industry, certificates might not lead you anywhere if you don’t have inherent talent for the job in radio.

For becoming a RJ, of course, a certificate might not do absolutely anything – except teach you about things like distance between your mouth and the mike or the working of the sound console.

So there, take your call. You can become RJ later on too. For the moment, you can try production.

Twenty two people had lost their lives in the recent week-long agitation by Gujjars for inclusion in the ST category. While the human casualty, fortunately, was limited to 1 in the Dera Sachcha Sauda and Akal Takht confrontation, shops and business establishments had suffered a major blow. We are citing only these examples here not because they are novel in nature, but only because the latest in the series of travesty of justice in our nation.

In fact, so prevalent, and consequently so tragic is the problem that it has now become comical! A participant of a popular comedy show on TV had once mentioned, “in our country even if a pig hurts a kid, people would get on to streets and burn a public transport bus. Kyon bhai, did the pig come to the locality in that bus?”

The joke in itself is funny, but it tells a very grim story of India’s utter contempt for public property. In fact, another joke says that the Indian public considers public property as its own property and goes about doing whatever it wants to with it!

The fact of the matter is that even though man is a social animal, the animal instinct is always lurking round the corner. Whether it is about the desire for others’ spouses and wealth or a case of intimidating and harassing someone weaker than us, we humans are always on a lookout for unleashing our inner animal on to the society. And when the first few experiments succeed, without having to pay any price, the act of putting the wild energy to destructive use almost becomes an addiction.

But that is about individuals or a mob. We don’t live in a jungle. There is a desire for a structure or order. And precisely for purpose, we have an entity called government. Unfortunately, governments in India either pander to the baser instincts of individuals or mobs or are scared of the latter.

Conveniently for both the mob and the government, both are faceless entities, which go unpunished for their respective acts. So while a mob can ransack a public bus without getting too personal in its war against, well, anything, government too hides behind the excuse of such acts being “a spontaneous act of anger by general public”.
But what about the loss of public property in the process. Who pays for it?

But before we get too remorseful about destruction of public property, let’s get it clear what constitutes public property.

According to THE PREVENTION OF DAMAGE TO PUBLIC PROPERTY ACT, 1984, public property is defined as follows:
Any property, whether immovable or movable (including any machinery) which is owned by, or in the possession of, or under the control of-

(i) The Central Government;
(ii) Any State Government;
(iii) Any local, authority;
(iv) Any corporation established by, or under, Central, Provincial or State Act;
(v) Any company as defined in Section 617 of the Companies, Act, 1956 (1 of 1956);
(vi) Any institution, concern or undertaking which the Central Government may, notification in the Official Gazette, specify in this behalf.

So, what’s in it for us? Why should we be overtly concerned if some maniac burns down a city bus?

Because, a part of the sales, service and income taxes, along with things like octroi etc that the government collects from us is in the name of such facilities. Now if the government itself doesn’t care for those things, allows them to be destroyed and eventually makes us bereft of those facilities, what are we giving our hard-earned money to the government for? For eg: If the government charges a 2% cess on IT for education and doesn’t make it any better, isn’t that a case of cheating; and looting of your property? Think.

(I) Australian cricket team pulls out of the Zimbabwe tour

It would not have been much of a contest anyway. If the series had been undertaken, very few – even in the cricketing world – would have spared much time on following the series. But now that the series has been called off – or should we say boycotted by Cricket Australia, on strong suggestion from the Australian government, the issue of mixing sports with politics has risen again.

Let’s try and understand the background of the happening.

A group called The Zimbabwe Movement (for Freedom, Democracy, Peace & Prosperity) represents a voice of organisations and nations across the globe about the state of affairs in Zimbabwe.

Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party are said to have destroyed all forms of democracy, freedom of speech and human rights in Zimbabwe and are responsible for countless crimes against citizens, including:

• Murder of over 20 000 people in Matabeleland in the so called Gukurahundi massacres in the early 1980s
• Intimidation, torture, rape and murder of those who dare to disagree with the regime
• Silencing free speech through legislative and physical means
• Promotion of racism by publicly demonising ethnic minorities
• Starvation of opposition party supporters by denying them access to international food aid – seeking to use food as a political tool
• Harassment and intimidation of the judiciary, refusal to accept unfavourable judgments and ignoring the country’s constitution
• Wholesale rigging of state elections. manipulating, beating and killing in order to remain in power.. Hundreds of thousands denied the right to vote for a candidate of their choice.
• Blatant theft of state funds through massive government corruption and cronyism
• Abuse of state institutions such as the Police, Army and Central Intelligence Organisation

The thing that hackles the ‘western powers’ the most is an act that can only be called ‘reverse racism’ – persecution of ‘whites’ (including cricketers like Andy Flower) and their rights by the entirely ‘black’ Mugabe government.
Would the world have reacted if ‘whites’ were not hurt? Take your call.

(II) Hollywood gets into Darfur, well, in spirit anyway:

Darfur crisis is a violent conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan between the Sudanese Military and the Janjaweed militia, recruited mostly from tribes on one side and a variety of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups.

The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, is said to have provided money and assistance to the militia and has participated in joint attacks targeting the land-tilling tribes from which the Darfuri rebels draw support.

The conflict began in February 2003. Unlike in the Second Sudanese Civil War, which was fought between the primarily Muslim north and Christian south, almost all of the combatants and victims in Darfur are Muslim.
The United Nations (UN) estimates that the conflict has left as many as 450,000 dead from violence and disease, while Sudan’s government claims that over 9,000 people have been killed. As ever, the true figure would be somewhere in between, though arguably, more towards the UN figures.

Adding to that is the mind-boggling statistics of 2.5 million getting displaced as of October 2006!

Pertinently though, while the mass media routinely describes the conflict as both “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide,” and the United States government has described it as genocide,the UN has declined to do so. While judiciousness of US governments is always suspect, the lethargy of UN often proves worse than the various mis-adventures of US.

The conflict taking place in Darfur has many interwoven causes. While rooted in structural inequality between the center of the country around the Nile and the ‘peripheral’ areas such as Darfur, tensions were exacerbated in the last two decades of the twentieth century by a combination of environmental calamity, political opportunism and regional politics.

A point of particular confusion has been the characterization of the conflict as one between ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ populations, a dichotomy that one historian describes as “both true and false”.

Interestingly, a fighting between ancient neighbours has caught the fancy of Hollywood. And Darfur peace organisations – real and fakes alike – can look forward to some green paper.