Our little town Nagercoil is at the southern most
corner of India. During my childhood, Elangai Vanoli (Ceylone Radio) was
very popular. They had two services in tamil - tamil chevai one and tamil
chevai two. Tamil chevai one is of no interest to us, as they were
competing with the fare dished out by All India Radio from Tirunelveli, Tiruchi
and Chennai (read - dull and unpalatable). Tamil chevai two was immensely
popular. Walking from my school to home (4 km), we can hear the broadcast
almost uninterrupted, from the shops and homes on the way.
The morning service is from 7.00 - 9.98 am and after a gap of 2 hours there
is non stop entertainment from 12.00 noon to 5.58 pm. (Later on they started
a evening service too). It is all tamil movie songs and variety programmes.
Every morning will start with pongum poompunal (all new songs), followed
by vAnavil (rainbow), AN kural (male voice), peN kural (female voice), en
viruppam (my choice), and nIngaL kettavai (your choice).
Similar well designed movie song based programmes follow throughout the
day. On Sundays, there will be many sponsored programmes and in the gaps
it is vidumuRai viruppam (holiday choice). We never leave the radio sets
on Sundays.
When the ethnic conflict became worse, the service was curtailed and eventually
lost all its shine. That era came to an end.
Started listening to radio in the taxis of Shanghai. Shanghai FM broadcasting
are all interesting. Talk shows, user phone-ins are all in Chinese. It used
to be a fun to listen.
When landed back in Chennai last year, Chennai FM 1, attracted me. Have
to keep the interesting programs on tab and tune in at the right time.
The whole thing was turned upside down, with the arrival of Suriyan FM and
Radio Mirchi - two private FM channels in Chennai. Now it is 24 hours non-stop,
listener wooing broadcasting. I hope they will take some lessons from the
Ilangai vAnoli days and enliven their show much more.
