Radio poised for a roaring comeback
Maswood Alam Khan | Monday, 16 June 2008
THE most punishing episode in one's life is 'to wait' uncertainly for something pleasant to happen: to wait for the postman to deliver the letter from your sweet heart or for the traffic surgeon to give the green signal for your car to move ahead, for instance.
Such punishments I have been enduring almost everyday at different crossingsalong my driving routes during my both morning and evening commutes.
To distract my frustrations of such agonizing waits I, while driving, regularly tune in to FM 100 meter band over my car radio to listen to BBC English Service. Thus I got used to my 40 minutes bumper-to-bumper drive as a fatalistic matter of fact and have been using my commuting time to keep myself updated with the latest happenings around the world and scholarly views and analyses from erudite correspondents and guest speakers of BBC London.
Radio is my very old and engaging accompaniment. I could not sleep for a whole night out of excitement back in the year 1959 after my father had allowed me for the first time in my life to touch the switching knobs of our radio and tutored me how to tune in to not only Medium Wave radio stations of Dhaka and Calcutta but also Short Wave radio stations like those of London and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
I gaped with my jaws sagged and open at my father, a proud owner of a state of the art radio mounted on mahogany pedestal, as I raptly listened to his scientific lecture (though I later discovered from my mother that my father was a bit of a duffer at science) on how radio waves travel long distances in the air and our GEC Radio connected to a long external copper antennae hoisted on the roof of our house instantly catches live human voices uttered just seconds back from radio stations located hundreds of miles away.
Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1965, said: "From a long view of the history of mankind---seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics."
In 1864, Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell described electromagnetism---the relationship between electricity and magnetism--- in four classic equations. These equations, which are now collectively known as Maxwell's equations, describe the interrelationship between electric fields, magnetic fields, electric charge, and electric current---the very foundation on which great scientists like Heinrich Hertz, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Karl Ferdinand Braun, Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi worked tirelessly and unfurled to the human civilization the fruition of science and technology of electromagnetic radiation or in simpler terms 'radio waves'.
Radio waves have killed distance and in turn have made possible the comfort and convenience we have now been enjoying from radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, overland microwave links, satellite and deep space communications, GPS (Global Positioning System), radar, microwave cooking and remote controls---to cite only a few examples of a plethora of practical applications that are dependent on radio technology.
On December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi and his assistants were able to hear the three short bursts of the Morse code 'S' at the receiving station set up in a hospital in Signal Hill, St. John's Newfoundland. This was the first transatlantic wireless telegraph transmission originated in Poldhu in Cornwall, England, 2100 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.
"Once out of sight of land those who went down to the sea in ships belonged to another world---a world of stark loneliness and utter silence", said Karl Baarslag in his book "SOS to the Rescue" that was published by Oxford University Press in 1935. "Ships burned or foundered in storms with not so much as a whisper reaching land to tell their fate. The crew of a sinking or burning ship fought their battle for life, silently and alone. Wireless telegraphy with its magic powers was to wrest from the sea its ancient terror of silence and to give speech to ships which had been mute since the dawn of navigation."
There cannot be many people who screwed up at school, failed to get into university, and then went on to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. But one did: he was Guglielmo Marconi; he made radio. He managed to transform Maxwell's equations into a social upheaval. The 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Guglielmo Marconi and Carl Ferdinand Braun, in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.
In 1923, Marconi discovered to his great surprise that short-wave (higher frequency) radio waves, of relatively low power, could be beamed in a particular direction and reach out to very great distances. The great advantages of the short-wave beam system were that smaller aerials and reflectors could be used and much less power was needed to achieve the same results.
From early 1995 till 1998 for about three and a half years I was cut off from my soil during my tenure as a banker in Malaysia. The only regular link I had with my soil was my most favourite Bangla Programme of Voice of America (VOA) that I used to tune in to through Short Wave Meter Band 25, 31 or 41 every night from 12 midnight till 1 after midnight (KL Time).
I never switched off my radio till the signature tune of the programme ended completely. The only time I would feel truly connected with my home was when sitting alone on the balcony of my apartment in Kuala Lumpur I would sip a tea while listening to all the segments of the daily Bangla service of VOA. The theme music of the Bangla service was in fact a call of my homeland.
The famous broadcaster Masuma Khatun's husky voice with a kind of undulated tone used to sing in my ears as more than a note of music. Her avuncular intonation evoked in me a filial affection towards her though I met her neither in person nor in picture. I was truly a blind fan of Masuma!
My lonely days in Kuala Lumpur, nevertheless, all on a sudden became less burdensome, thanks to a precious piece of advice given by Hanifa Bee, a Malaysian banker of the Bank Pertanian Malaysia. One day I was surprised to see almost all the desks on the floor where Hanifa works adorned with small radio sets and most of the employees were listening to a particular radio station in muffled sound. The music they were listening to did not in any way divert their attention from their individual works; rather, as Hanifa told me, it helped fatigued workers to recharge their energy. I was flabbergasted!
It was "Soft and Easy", a very popular non-stop FM Radio programme on English Music that could be heard in absolute clarity while driving anywhere in Malaysia including the newly built North-South Highway linking Malaysia and Singapore. I was literally hooked with "Soft and Easy" from that day of my visit to Hanifa's office.
My apartment which took on a forlorn look after my family had moved to North America suddenly started throbbing with life. Blared from my Sony Stereo System nostalgia music featuring simple, catchy, soft and laid-back songs kept my mood always buoyant and perked up. I felt deeply connected with the FM Radio Station for the articulate humors, jokes and quips Radio Jockeys of the programme used to crack in short interludes between songs to make the listeners feel home and relaxed. As I was a loner in my house, I also used to dance to the rhymes of my most favourite songs---a funny in-house performance I would have been the last person to do in the presence of a second person.
Old songs of the fifties and the sixties like "I heard it through the Grapevine" of Marvin Gaye, "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" of James Brown, "Tears of A Clown" of Smokey Robinson etc., would cool the air I breathed, untangle clutters of my mind, soothe strains of my nerves and induce me to hum to their tunes and tones. At times my eyes would get frosted with tears while listening to a very nostalgic melody like "Streets of London" by Ralph McTell that was recorded for 1969 album 'Spiral Staircase'.
Television has gagged creativity of the listening viewers who, when they were dependent only on radio for infotainments, would focus their full attention on syllables of each word and pitches of each sound wafted from radios. A radio listener would paint, in his imaginary mental frame, every broadcaster, every character and every episode with the best colours under the sun and the finest brushes of his/her own choice in a participatory way connecting the broadcaster and the listener in stronger bonds compared to TV casters and their viewers. Television viewers now idle away their time mostly as couch potatoes having no scope to stimulate their intellect for any colourful visualization.
People are on move; they don't have time to converse over telephone, let alone sit for audiovisual infotainment through television. Texting (so-called SMS service) through cell phones is now the smart way to keep 'people on the move' posted about anything. The only corridor to reach the majority of people would be through FM radio chip installed in all the modern versions of cell phone handsets. Radio is once again poised for a thunderous comeback as the most efficacious medium for advertisers to reach their target groups.
Of late, to my uneasy surprise, I find myself having indulged in activities not exactly suitable for men of my age. I seem to have forgotten my long habit of listening to BBC news in the mornings. Instead I spend the whole morning listening to songs and anecdotes, jokes and quips that are aired by Radio Foorti or Radio Today, two very popular FM Radio Stations broadcasting their programmes, tailored specially for teenagers, from Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. God knows what has happened to me!
I abhor the idea of being pulled in a car by a driver. I find the latitude of my freedom severely shrunk when I take the backseat of my car. I have an extra fascination for the driving seat where I enjoy my best liberty to do whatever I fancy when nobody is around to eavesdrop my humming a song. So, I drive my car myself for my commuting to, and from, office.
Tuned in to FM Meter Band 88.00 of Radio Foorti, the other day in the morning, as I parked my car in a long queue of dozens of cars jammed in a gridlock near Mahakhali crossing I laid back on my driving seat---my eyes closed, my hands backwardly embracing the headrest, my head swinging back and forth, my right index finger tapping against my other finger, both my feet tapping on the floor of my car and my hip swaying to the rhythm of a song sung by a young girl: Ke bashi bajairey, Mon keno nachairey, Amaar praan je manena, Kisui bhalo lagena. (Who is there blowing the flute? To ruffle my mind up? My punished soul is desperate....in quest for unreachable pleasures.)
At a piercing shriek of a hydraulic horn blared by a truck just behind me I jumped up and opened my eyelids! I found all the vehicles that were in front of my car long gone away and the traffic surgeon shooting his bloodshot eyes out at me. My pleasant break for a secret tryst with the young singer is rudely snapped!
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank. He can be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]
Such punishments I have been enduring almost everyday at different crossingsalong my driving routes during my both morning and evening commutes.
To distract my frustrations of such agonizing waits I, while driving, regularly tune in to FM 100 meter band over my car radio to listen to BBC English Service. Thus I got used to my 40 minutes bumper-to-bumper drive as a fatalistic matter of fact and have been using my commuting time to keep myself updated with the latest happenings around the world and scholarly views and analyses from erudite correspondents and guest speakers of BBC London.
Radio is my very old and engaging accompaniment. I could not sleep for a whole night out of excitement back in the year 1959 after my father had allowed me for the first time in my life to touch the switching knobs of our radio and tutored me how to tune in to not only Medium Wave radio stations of Dhaka and Calcutta but also Short Wave radio stations like those of London and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
I gaped with my jaws sagged and open at my father, a proud owner of a state of the art radio mounted on mahogany pedestal, as I raptly listened to his scientific lecture (though I later discovered from my mother that my father was a bit of a duffer at science) on how radio waves travel long distances in the air and our GEC Radio connected to a long external copper antennae hoisted on the roof of our house instantly catches live human voices uttered just seconds back from radio stations located hundreds of miles away.
Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1965, said: "From a long view of the history of mankind---seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics."
In 1864, Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell described electromagnetism---the relationship between electricity and magnetism--- in four classic equations. These equations, which are now collectively known as Maxwell's equations, describe the interrelationship between electric fields, magnetic fields, electric charge, and electric current---the very foundation on which great scientists like Heinrich Hertz, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Karl Ferdinand Braun, Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi worked tirelessly and unfurled to the human civilization the fruition of science and technology of electromagnetic radiation or in simpler terms 'radio waves'.
Radio waves have killed distance and in turn have made possible the comfort and convenience we have now been enjoying from radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, overland microwave links, satellite and deep space communications, GPS (Global Positioning System), radar, microwave cooking and remote controls---to cite only a few examples of a plethora of practical applications that are dependent on radio technology.
On December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi and his assistants were able to hear the three short bursts of the Morse code 'S' at the receiving station set up in a hospital in Signal Hill, St. John's Newfoundland. This was the first transatlantic wireless telegraph transmission originated in Poldhu in Cornwall, England, 2100 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.
"Once out of sight of land those who went down to the sea in ships belonged to another world---a world of stark loneliness and utter silence", said Karl Baarslag in his book "SOS to the Rescue" that was published by Oxford University Press in 1935. "Ships burned or foundered in storms with not so much as a whisper reaching land to tell their fate. The crew of a sinking or burning ship fought their battle for life, silently and alone. Wireless telegraphy with its magic powers was to wrest from the sea its ancient terror of silence and to give speech to ships which had been mute since the dawn of navigation."
There cannot be many people who screwed up at school, failed to get into university, and then went on to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. But one did: he was Guglielmo Marconi; he made radio. He managed to transform Maxwell's equations into a social upheaval. The 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Guglielmo Marconi and Carl Ferdinand Braun, in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.
In 1923, Marconi discovered to his great surprise that short-wave (higher frequency) radio waves, of relatively low power, could be beamed in a particular direction and reach out to very great distances. The great advantages of the short-wave beam system were that smaller aerials and reflectors could be used and much less power was needed to achieve the same results.
From early 1995 till 1998 for about three and a half years I was cut off from my soil during my tenure as a banker in Malaysia. The only regular link I had with my soil was my most favourite Bangla Programme of Voice of America (VOA) that I used to tune in to through Short Wave Meter Band 25, 31 or 41 every night from 12 midnight till 1 after midnight (KL Time).
I never switched off my radio till the signature tune of the programme ended completely. The only time I would feel truly connected with my home was when sitting alone on the balcony of my apartment in Kuala Lumpur I would sip a tea while listening to all the segments of the daily Bangla service of VOA. The theme music of the Bangla service was in fact a call of my homeland.
The famous broadcaster Masuma Khatun's husky voice with a kind of undulated tone used to sing in my ears as more than a note of music. Her avuncular intonation evoked in me a filial affection towards her though I met her neither in person nor in picture. I was truly a blind fan of Masuma!
My lonely days in Kuala Lumpur, nevertheless, all on a sudden became less burdensome, thanks to a precious piece of advice given by Hanifa Bee, a Malaysian banker of the Bank Pertanian Malaysia. One day I was surprised to see almost all the desks on the floor where Hanifa works adorned with small radio sets and most of the employees were listening to a particular radio station in muffled sound. The music they were listening to did not in any way divert their attention from their individual works; rather, as Hanifa told me, it helped fatigued workers to recharge their energy. I was flabbergasted!
It was "Soft and Easy", a very popular non-stop FM Radio programme on English Music that could be heard in absolute clarity while driving anywhere in Malaysia including the newly built North-South Highway linking Malaysia and Singapore. I was literally hooked with "Soft and Easy" from that day of my visit to Hanifa's office.
My apartment which took on a forlorn look after my family had moved to North America suddenly started throbbing with life. Blared from my Sony Stereo System nostalgia music featuring simple, catchy, soft and laid-back songs kept my mood always buoyant and perked up. I felt deeply connected with the FM Radio Station for the articulate humors, jokes and quips Radio Jockeys of the programme used to crack in short interludes between songs to make the listeners feel home and relaxed. As I was a loner in my house, I also used to dance to the rhymes of my most favourite songs---a funny in-house performance I would have been the last person to do in the presence of a second person.
Old songs of the fifties and the sixties like "I heard it through the Grapevine" of Marvin Gaye, "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" of James Brown, "Tears of A Clown" of Smokey Robinson etc., would cool the air I breathed, untangle clutters of my mind, soothe strains of my nerves and induce me to hum to their tunes and tones. At times my eyes would get frosted with tears while listening to a very nostalgic melody like "Streets of London" by Ralph McTell that was recorded for 1969 album 'Spiral Staircase'.
Television has gagged creativity of the listening viewers who, when they were dependent only on radio for infotainments, would focus their full attention on syllables of each word and pitches of each sound wafted from radios. A radio listener would paint, in his imaginary mental frame, every broadcaster, every character and every episode with the best colours under the sun and the finest brushes of his/her own choice in a participatory way connecting the broadcaster and the listener in stronger bonds compared to TV casters and their viewers. Television viewers now idle away their time mostly as couch potatoes having no scope to stimulate their intellect for any colourful visualization.
People are on move; they don't have time to converse over telephone, let alone sit for audiovisual infotainment through television. Texting (so-called SMS service) through cell phones is now the smart way to keep 'people on the move' posted about anything. The only corridor to reach the majority of people would be through FM radio chip installed in all the modern versions of cell phone handsets. Radio is once again poised for a thunderous comeback as the most efficacious medium for advertisers to reach their target groups.
Of late, to my uneasy surprise, I find myself having indulged in activities not exactly suitable for men of my age. I seem to have forgotten my long habit of listening to BBC news in the mornings. Instead I spend the whole morning listening to songs and anecdotes, jokes and quips that are aired by Radio Foorti or Radio Today, two very popular FM Radio Stations broadcasting their programmes, tailored specially for teenagers, from Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. God knows what has happened to me!
I abhor the idea of being pulled in a car by a driver. I find the latitude of my freedom severely shrunk when I take the backseat of my car. I have an extra fascination for the driving seat where I enjoy my best liberty to do whatever I fancy when nobody is around to eavesdrop my humming a song. So, I drive my car myself for my commuting to, and from, office.
Tuned in to FM Meter Band 88.00 of Radio Foorti, the other day in the morning, as I parked my car in a long queue of dozens of cars jammed in a gridlock near Mahakhali crossing I laid back on my driving seat---my eyes closed, my hands backwardly embracing the headrest, my head swinging back and forth, my right index finger tapping against my other finger, both my feet tapping on the floor of my car and my hip swaying to the rhythm of a song sung by a young girl: Ke bashi bajairey, Mon keno nachairey, Amaar praan je manena, Kisui bhalo lagena. (Who is there blowing the flute? To ruffle my mind up? My punished soul is desperate....in quest for unreachable pleasures.)
At a piercing shriek of a hydraulic horn blared by a truck just behind me I jumped up and opened my eyelids! I found all the vehicles that were in front of my car long gone away and the traffic surgeon shooting his bloodshot eyes out at me. My pleasant break for a secret tryst with the young singer is rudely snapped!
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank. He can be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]