FEATURE
The World Radio Day celebrates the radio as a medium, to encourage major networks and promote cooperation, freedom of expression over the airwaves. Tulip brings to you a brief interactive session with the favorite RJs of Hyderabad to celebrate this day...
RJ Fakhruddin Ahmed - 101.9FM Rainbow Use to do RJing on Saturdays, on, Twin Cities 101.9FM Rainbow in Hyderabad before moving to Seattle couple of months ago to make a brand new weekend show on DesiAM1250. What is your favorite part about being a Radio Jockey? It is to be able to live and create the magical world of love, peace, values, trust, respect and abundance of hope and dreams by doing just our job. What’s your favorite memory with a listener? When a listener says, “it left an indelible mark on their life after the show” forms the most special memory. We, once on a listener’s request ran “father Speak up” on a live show for a father (a professor) who left his family and was unresponsive for months on a father’s day special. The listener called back saying that his father not only called back the family but returned to their home too. It also feels really special when the junior RJs come and tell how I have inspired them to get into this field, since I was a complete introvert with a very poor command in any spoken language (when I started) managed to get into radio. For years, I used to write for shows aired on all India radio station and International station and were heavily influenced by few of them. If you had a chance to make your own show what would it be? It would be with all my favorite RJs that inspired me, Ronny Randeep Arora (AIR Delhi/Hyderabad), Shreeja Ramkumar(AIR Delhi/HumFM Dubai/AM1250 Seattle), Shamshir Rai Luthra (AlR Delhi/RedFM), Deepa Sreekumar (Radio Midday Bangalore) and Reggie Yates (BBC 1, I used to ape him blindly and fail ) and it would be unabashedly conversational, or may be a game show. With each passing day, we are taking the radio away from real life and turning into some kind of idiot box, I would want to bring the real life back to radio. As a Radio Jockey, do you get to talk to celebrities? No, not the A-List, my whole philosophy of programming is, yes celebrities can inspire a large part of population but by doing so we make them infallible and in my opinion and experience to be inspired by something infallible is unreal. For me the common man on the road has enough experience in his life which has tremendous potential to inspire millions, we at radio should enable that sharing, make them the heroes. 54 FEBRUARY, 2017 - TULIP