Vidya Rajaram's Blogspace

The Radio Review Series : Part 1

M-Time / Dine with Music

This is the English Music show that comes every evening between 7 and 9 on Rainbow FM. Usually there is one hour of a callin show - where users can call in and request for songs and the next one hour called Dine with Music is just songs.

This used to be the only show playing English songs in Madras till the advent of the private FM Stations. This station had different RJs every day ...ofcourse each one leading the show in his/her own way , playing user's requests.....

Saturdays is when the first hour of the show is sponsored . Its called the Odyssey Hour or something - where a recorded voice is played with a combination of some really nice songs. Generally, the hour also consists of an interview with a personality ; Sometimes there a couple of callers who tell us why they liked this show... This is a recorded show...and if you are a keen radio listener like me , you'd probably make out that its recorded. I personally am against recorded shows on radio involving live callers....it kinda spoils the whole effect of the show !

On the Music : The music being played generally depends on the RJ who is playing it. There is an RJ who plays more of Gospel Music than songs...Then there is another RJ who always plays peppy kinda music....and ofcourse there are users who call in and request for songs which are generally obliged to by these RJs ...and these requests I think depend on the kind of music thats "in" at that time.

On the RJs : I must confess....I really admire a few RJs for the kind of English they use and the voice they have....but then , they are ofcourse very very few on this Radio station. And I think its a pleasant surprise to listen to such good English on Prasar Bharti.. (no offence meant , but I have heard some of their programmes in tamil and they are really miserable when it comes to the RJs ). Some RJs are really pathetic - the English they speaks sounds like Tamil , some put on a false accent ( rather try to ) and some even have bad voices and yet some try to leave their own mark by doing the show a little differently from the rest

On the Callers : There are callers of varied age groups...School children to retired gentlemen..... There are a set of Regular callers which I think makes this show really unique for the sheer persistence of these callers to call in to the program everyday.

I think it would be good if they played some club music at times . Also , I rarely hear them play any remixes. They used to play remixes a couple of months back...Iam not sure why this has stopped. I have rarely heard anyone play Cher , La Bouche , Whigfield and the likes.....and I wonder why ! The music played everyday is very repititive. I mean , you'd probably hear the same song atleast 5 times during the week......which could be boring to a few. On a couple of days , I have even heard them play retro bigtime.....Songs like "Bachelor Boy" - Ah ! Pure Nostalgia ! The news in Tamil and the financial and sports updates that happen in the middle of the show kind of spoil the fun....I think they can reduce it to any one of these in these two hours....It would do a lot good to the show. They also need to change the hold music they play when you call them . Now that music is something you gotta hear to believe how rotten it could get !

All-in-all , A show you can actually listen to without getting bored whichever age group you belong to.

posted by Vidya Rajaram @ 10/11/2006 12:16:00 PM