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Sometimes many of us jobless souls flip radio channels. Nobody can
afford to pay us to do it but we just meddle with our radios because we
are either stuck in a traffic jam trying to get to work, late for that
important meeting or we’re just bored.
Or if you’re sick of the song you are listening to, you simply look
for another one and sometimes when manually finding a frequency, you
come across radio stations you have never heard of! It’s like Nelly
Furtado singing, ‘On the Radio’ or the Corrs going `So I listen to the
radio’ while Radiohead is making their own statement.
Today, the radio scene is totally cluttered and buttered. Be it rock,
pop, jazz, retro or tri-lingual melodies, the airwaves have never been
so distributed. Just look at the microphones of the many radio stations
in Sri Lanka when personalities speak. The flower bouquet below the
podium can’t even match twisting wires and metal.
There are popular English radio stations as well as classic radio
stations. When talking about morning shows, the Morning Showgram
presenters at popular radio channels have the potential to do their best
because they have the right chemistry. More than their chatter and
jokes, they come up with the wackiest ideas. Personalities themselves
have lots of potential in Sri Lanka but there are some who need to get
their basics right.
It is not easy to keep a loyal listener base in Sri Lanka but we do
need a good mix of knowledgeable, intelligent and wacky presenters to
make us feel happy.
When old radio stations revamp and relaunch, they give better wages
for veterans in the scene and hey presto! The voices also go different!
Others are audience specific as they cater to the rock crowd. One
station is mostly for lovebirds at the rate that it’s going with smooth
flow songs and just when I thought a particular Radio was a retro
station, now it plays everything.
While Nihal Arthanayake has made waves on BBC’s Radio One, many
others should try to reach that level. It will be a revolution if
someone pays a radio station to play music 24/7 without any
advertisements - it’ll be number one in Sri Lanka. Till then, happy
Radioing!
- Nilma
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