Wes Malik
Adventures in Radio and Television

Spending every waking hour thinking about what to say next to listeners who tune in to the archaic technology of radio can keep an on air personality busy twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Not to mention formulating new ways of how to say it can give broadcasting professionals nightmares.

Being entertaining or informative, or both, require hours of preparation and a conscious awareness which lends to preparedness from which comes a terminology called ‘Show Prep’. It’s the homework that goes into the broadcast which truly creates a distinguishable product for listeners.

Homework requires a lot of hard work.

And when it comes to the state of Public Radio on AM and FM frequencies in the country, that is a key missing ingredient.

The transition of transmissions paved way for new and exciting styles of broadcasting barely fifteen years ago, and AM Radio which was and still remains property of the state, started on it’s journey to the end.

Recognizing this, the state was quick to act and to reduce the monopoly to a duopoly for the next five years, deciding to mobilize it’s vast resources, technical prowess, and manpower to challenge the only FM channel that existed. An excellent move indeed, and armed with a new team of young broadcasters the state owned FM station made a small dent in the armour of the privately and professionally run pioneer FM100.

FM101 tried it’s best to provide quality programming to an audience which could have accepted a new entrant at the time. Unfortunately it failed to do so repeatedly because of archaic tube transistor modeled radio technology which spewed an inferior sound quality and zero attention to branding or marketing, internal or external, of the channel, shows, or the hosts. Not to mention producers getting lost in the long and winding hallways of the gargantuan Radio Pakistan premises did not help the channel.

Being the goliath Radio Pakistan is, it is a powerhouse of broadcasting knowledge and experience. From News to Information, intellectual discussions with the most brilliant minds in the country, to entertaining audiences with live music, poetry recitals to radio drama’s well into the eighties which was a lot of hard work, and the professionals of Radio Pakistan made their programs to perfection. For the longest time my dream had been to say the iconic sentence millions had listened to time and time again ‘“Yeh (pause for effect) Radio Pakistan Hai”. The people who ran state radio had the right stuff, and they worked hard to prove it.

Fortunately, I’ve been living my dream, or some critics would say ‘in’ a dream, for some time now and I had the honour of saying that sentence, and it pains me to see the current state of state radio.

Public radio or even state owned radio around the world is still an important medium of information for the general public on the move, be it FM or AM broadcasts, but with the pathetic quality of programming provided on state radio, few rely on the state for entertainment or information.

This hasn’t dissuaded the government to keep spending our tax money on running several FM station frequencies which rebroadcast AM programming such as the hourly new bulletin on air. Originally FM101 was supposed to break the monopoly of FM100, but with the forward thinking of PEMRA and the issuance in the environs of 500 licenses in Metro and Rural areas the need is diminished.

Why does the state continue to operate a failed unit? Not only this but state radio had the brilliant idea of starting an english only radio station called Planet 94 FM which is suffering the exact same fate as FM101. Without dispensing too much criticism to Planet 94, if your medium is English, here’s a suggestion from a guy who’s worked within your walls:hire people who can speak English properly.

In the present situation of the devolution of federal power and the preference towards privatisation, all the FM channels of Radio Pakistan should be immediately put up for sale for people who have the propensity to work hard and work smart to transform these channels to something remotely listenable. If that doesn’t sound like a plan, then a public private partnership being courted by the NHA’s new FM radio network could be a workable alternative to privatisation.

I also felt that AM Radio should also have been privatised, but on a recent trip down the motorway, I lost all FM signals and switched my radio to AM. I was pleasantly surprised to listen to a radio drama after decades! Bringing back memories of my ‘cassette kahanian’ the drama was an intelligently crafted piece on promoting behavioural change  in regards to women’s health and lady health workers which visit the rural area’s. Above all the drama was entertaining. When it finished, I tuned in to Chinese State Radio where two Chinese hosts, speaking in Urdu (!) taught me how to say “Pak Chine Dosti Zindabad’ in Chinese, all in the space of about 10 minutes. I tuned back to find the most interesting Punjabi show with the host explaining to me when to sow my crops, what fertilizer to use, which soil tests to carry out and which numbers I can call toll free if I need any help.

Rural areas can still benefit from AM Radio. But that will soon diminish as the reach of FM penetrates the smallest of cities in the country.

The crumbling state of state radio can still be saved, with a proud history of hard working men and women who served the nation, Radio Pakistan could still be the source of information and entertainment. I wouldn’t want anyone to say that a failing institution of a failing country was certainly expected. Vision, Leadership and above all Hard Work can bring back glory to state radio and hopefully the right people will be saying in a new and improved tone: ”Yeh (remember the pause for effect) Radio Pakistan Hai”