[HCDX]: All India Radio

["Mike Brooker" <aum108@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

News about All India Radio, from today's edition of The Times of India
<http://www.timesofindia.com/>:

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Akashvani annual awards today

By A Staff Reporter

AHMEDABAD: For the first time in 25 years, the Akashvani annual awards will
be held outside Delhi and the
honour of hosting the event organised by the director general, All India
Radio (AIR), has been given to
Ahmedabad.

With guests of honour such as Union home minister LK Advani, minister of
information and broadcasting Arun
Jaitely and Governor of Gujarat Sundar Singh Bhandari, the offices of AIR
Ahmedabad are all agog with excitement.  While senior AIR officials see it
as an encouraging sign to hold the awards outside Delhi, others see it as
challenge which AIR Ahmedabad is ready to rise to.

In the 64 years since its existence, AIR has grown to cover 97 per cent of
the country's population of whom 99 million are estimated to own a radio
set. Covering 24 languages and 146 dialects, AIR today counts among the few
largest broadcasting networks in the world.

With a view to a future rather than a past, and with a confidence in the
reach of the radio, Engineer-in Chief HM
Joshi spoke to the media on the future trends at AIR.

"The future of AIR is digital besides in five years we should be ready with
a computer networking of major AIR
stations," said Joshi adding that currently a Rs 60 crore state-of-the-art
studio project was on in Delhi which would have 27 transmission studio and
would be tapeless.

Satellite news gathering equipment has been incorporated in the network to
facilitate instant dispatch of news to the central stations from anywhere in
the field through satellite.

Sky radio external services and reaching out to the international audience
through other radio networks like
World Radio Network (WRN) and World Space (WS) for dissemination through
cable, satellite and terrestrial FM networks is also on.

AIR has also been broadcasting on the Internet both in text and audio models
and has also started live broadcasts. The feasibility of earning revenue
through ads on Internet sites is also being studied.

Talking on Gujarat, Joshi said, in a bid to increase the listenership in
Gujarat, AIR has decided to implement
projects like FM stereo channel at Ahmedabad, local radio station at
Himmatnagar with multi-purpose studio, 10 kw FM transmitter and stereo play
back studio at Baroda among others. This entire upgradation programme would
be carried out at a cost of about Rs 12 crore.

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Mike Brooker
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