My Day as a Radio Jockey

Once a week, between 11 am and 5 pm, I anchor three one-hour shows on one of the FM stations in Bangalore. The first show's format is old Hindi film songs, the second one is a western music show, and the third one is an all request hour where I play Hindi film songs that listeners have called in the previous hour to request. A Kannada radio jockey (RJ) anchors the other three hours.

My work actually begins the day before when I go into the station and pick the songs I want to play on the old Hindi music hour and the western music hour. Then I come home, troll the internet and try to find interesting information, anecdotes or trivia about those songs.

I've developed a pattern now where on the oldies show I ask my listeners two trivia questions about the artists I play (Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Talat Mahmood, Geeta Dutt, etc.) or the actors in those old movies, and in the western music show, if I'm not doing a special on a particular artist, I have a topic for discussion throughout the hour.

Most of the shows on my radio station are interactive. The listeners interact with the RJ in one of two ways: either by sending in SMSs to designated mobile phones in the studio or by calling in on the studio line. Messages or calls relate to a number of things. They could be requests for particular songs, dedications of songs (X dedicates a song to Y for a birthday, anniversary, or just chumma), responses to questions posed by the RJs, or traffic updates.

So at 10 on the morning of my show, I walk into the studio and check my cue sheet that has a list of ads to be played and special instructions, if any. Following that, a quick peep into the computer to figure out the files where the promos and ads are located. At 11 am, following a two-minute news update, the microphone, the console (with a lot of blinking lights and about 12 faders), the CD players, the telephone line, the mobile, the computer, and the spool tape player (yes, we have those too) are all mine.

Of course, in the minutes before I go on air, I am cursing myself and wondering what the hell I've gotten myself into. Couldn't I have just shut up and stayed home?

Anyway, at 11:02, it's too late to turn back. I make my initial announcement ("It's just past 11 am on this fabulous Friday, and you are listening to Meethi Yaadein on FM ___. This is Sujatha, with you for the next hour as I....") and play the first song. My butterflies generally settle down somewhat.

SMSs have started coming in by then. So it's play a song, pull that fader down when the song ends, push up the announcer faders, read messages, push the computer fader up, play ads and promos, pull the computer fader down, push up the announcer faders, say something about the song coming up, pull down the announcer faders, and push up the fader of the system from which the song is playing. If there is a live caller or if something is going from the spool player, then pushing and pulling the appropriate faders there.

After an hour of this, it's a two minute news update again which is read by a newsreader from the news division. By now, I've completely settled down and have a lot of fun on the western music show. It's an awesome feeling to play a song you love and have your listeners listen to your songs. I'm usually belting the songs out in the studio myself. The listeners are also very interested in responding to discussions. Quite a few times, I've received messages asking what the topic was because they had tuned in late. There was a good response today to a discussion about the Discovery astronauts and their courage.

Between 1 and 1:30 pm, listeners call in to request songs from Hindi films and from 1:30 and 2 it's a mad rush to gobble some lunch and get the songs. The hour between 2 and 3 is extremely popular and the requested songs, even though they are played often, are nice tracks to listen to. After being out of touch with Hindi films and songs for so long, I'm now aware of what is released when and I at least know the names of all the new singers.

Although I am not on air between 3 and 5, there's a bunch of administrative stuff to complete and I have to be in the studio until the English RJ for the 5pm to 11 pm transmission shows up. I usually leave at 5 pm and am home by 6.

This is so completely different from anything I've done so far. Although I'd done shows for the youth program while in college and did a few children's shows after I came back, they were all pre-recorded. The feeling of being on air live and the knowledge that the moment words come out of your mouth they've gone on air (there is no time lag here unlike in the US) make for quite an experience.