the gaana bajaana on Pune's radiowaves..

"Ass... ass... ass.... ass.... Superhits 93.5" goes one of the FM radio channels in Pune... until sometime back, this terribly sad jingle played EVERY 5 minutes on this particular radio station... Jingle apart, the station has a hilarious group of RJ's - including one who has a neither-here-nor-there voice [a voice that hasn't cracked as yet] - while another probably stammers on air [no offense to any one who stammers but don't try to speak fancy while stammering!]. The RJ's follow up their anthem jingle with an even pathetic punch line "Theerka re theerka, masti main theerka!" And after all this if you are still listening to them, then you will find that the music they play tops it all! In trying to cater to both - the Marathi and Hindi audience - they make a mash of it and often play absolutely unheard of songs [and which are actually better off that way]. Very recently, it seems, this station has changed itself to 'Red FM 93.5 bajaate raho' and has since then been less embarrassing for themselves.

Not going frequency wise but rather by the order of dislike - next comes '[self-proclaimed] Pune's number one radio station - Radio City 91.1 FM!' Radio City, actually is not so bad but at the same time, ends up having nothing interesting or fun about it either! Some time back, as and when I used return late from office and flip to this station; they would have this deep baritone voice - who would more often than not be taking a call from one his fans [read: friends he pleads to or folks he gives prizes/incentive to!] and discussing why he is so good [!!!] - [and yes he would make the very-obvious-sounding attempts to play the praise down and act modest :)]. Off late in the evening slot, someone with a "double A" has probably taken the place of deep-baritone and is actually much better.

Next in my personal list comes the 'oldest and most popular' radio station of Pune - 'Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM - it's hot [:-|]'. And I have to write about the worst RJ man has had to endure - RJ Shrikanth! But before I talk about his disastrous work on air, I would like to mention, that Shrikanth single-handedly killed all the interest of the crowd at AR Rehman's concert in May this year. He was such a letdown, that some sponsors probably pulled back their adverts or thanks being mentioned by him, rather than having those come from 'His Master's Voice'. Shrikanth cracks the worst jokes on air and unfortunately no one stops him :( More unfortunately, the other RJ's on this station are no better... These two female RJ's [smita and aditi maybe?] discuss their clothes, neighbors and god-kn0ws-what on AIR and unnecessarily so in English. I have always wanted to tell them - that it's completely possible to speak ONLY in Marathi and sound cool but speaking in English with a Marathi undertone ends up making both the languages sound bad! But keeping all this aside, they have SUD [who I know a lot of people hate!] and I think he is brilliant! His opinions about his boss, his tragic marriage plans, his falling in love with his office colleague [Suchi Smita], his hiring Pinky detective agency to snoop around Suchi and some phoren-return dude friend of hers - IMHO all of it is too funny! He is the only reason why I place Radio Mirchi after Radio city in my dislike-meter.

And finally, a station which is probably the 'best amongst the worst'. Radio One - 94.3 FM. Radio One has some plusses to it:

• Good RJ's - Sangram is absolute fun to listen to when he is at his witty-best - as also when he is concerned about the stock markets :); Gya is smart, energetic, wacky and once-in-a-while-the-shayaar; Subhav has started English music late in the evenings [though of course his mix or choice is something not to be commented on as yet!]; Meenal seems to be the chatterbox - and with that I think I know this station really well!
• The music generally is decent - they keep it simple by playing the popular songs only - though that's exactly the reason why everyone flips stations - listening to the same songs repeatedly gets very boring - Radio ONE if you ever read this - please change this aspect!
  
• Ghanta Singh - he used to be really good... after the initial buzz, more or less he has been quite uncool - way below the SUD level
• And I think they play the most hated ads with lesser frequency - like the 'khao vimal re, khao vimal re... vimal pan masala, isme hain asli Kashmiri kesar ka dum or something-on-those-lines'
  

Of course since I crib so much about these stations, I must be listening to them very often. Reason being I am very lazy when it comes to burning/buying CD's and hence depend on radio while going/coming back from office and generally driving in the city. When going out of the city though, ipod + itunes = the best combination - but this makes sense only when you have a good navigator-cum-ipod jockey! :)

Anyway this post came more from my [and am assuming every Puneite's] wish that there was more of both - quality and quantity - on the Pune radio scene...