Music has been an integral part of radio programming, but when it comes to variety in music then radio is completely dominated by bollywood music. In its zest to stand apart from the herd, All India Radio (AIR) in Chhattisgarh provides variety in music. AIR Raipur station has bagged the best station for its contribution in folk music five times uninterruptedly.

Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, Raipur assistant director programming head Mokshada Chandrakar says, “I am a folk artiste so that helped me develop folk-based programming in AIR. As folk music is quite famous in Chhattisgarh so artistes singing Chhattisgarhi is enjoyed by audience here.”

The programmes aired from Raipur including the city covers four districts- Durg, Rajnandgaon, Kabirdham and Mahasumund.

She further adds, “We audition the singers who come with their team to perform and our jury decides if they have the calibre and then we record them.”

The station has variety in music as they air Chhattisgarhi tracks for three days and Hindi-based tracks for four days. “People in remote areas enjoy listening to Chhattisgarhi based music and programmes as they can associate with it,” she states.

The station focuses on special audience programming based on women, children, youth and farmers. “Programmes based for farmers awareness is famous and maximum farmers follow it. It happens in Chhattisgarhi language as we have to make farmers understand, so language plays an important role,” she says.

On the feedback programme that works for their station, Chandrakar explains, “We receive thousands of letters from audience and our audience research team reads it. We use it to guide them and air the response or write them back a letter.”                     

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