Radiocity 91 FM (91FM), Bangalore

(Note: The comic strip above is put here not to reflect anything on radio city, but to make a statement about the state of Indian media in general.)

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Radiocity started in Bangalore somewhere in 2001 and I would like to believe that I must have been the first guy to tune in! Seriously, I had been following the developments leading to the launch of the channel and hence tuned in the very first day it was on.

Radiocity has given Bangalore a much needed platform where one can talk anything and everything about the city.  And, of course, it plays nice music all day and all night long.  Having said that, I must say that it does not play my kinda music anymore.  It used to play real neat stuff when it got booted up.  But over the time, Radiocity has totally customized itself to cater fully to teeny-bopper junta (which is fine, as long as they know who their real customer is :-).  My kinda music only comes on waves these days with Retro Show, anchored by Priya Ganapati. She's one hell of an RJ and definitely my favourite. Maybe the reason is that I have also seen her once - in our culfest Unmaad?  Nah, the real reason is that she plays her music on air with her soul dipped in excitement!  You can almost visualize her dishing out the musical feast with delight and pride every Sunday night. My only complaint with that too is the change in timings (I am a whiner alright!).  Earlier the show used to be in the early evenings and now its scheduled on late nights (I am relatively an early sleeper).  Nevertheless, rock PG (Priya Ganapati) does.  Other RJs are, well, hip-hoppers, IMHO. But that doesn't change my habit of waking up to RC :-) I always keep my music system alarm on Radiocity.  I discovered some neat stuff like "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy" (Glen Campbell) and "Still got the Blues" (Gary Moore) after waking up once to these wonderful tunes on some fine mornings :-)  Its nice to wake up to an unknown tune on an unpredictable radio station, isn't it? :-) 

My own, personal experience with Radiocity is one where I was on Radiocity once to promote the alumni networking for my engineering alma mater -  Harcourt Butler Technological Institute.  We have started a mega initiative with an objective to connect with all alumni, across batches and across branches and made an announcement on Radiocity on July 05, 2003 regarding this.  The Programme Director (Velu Shankar) and RJ (Sunaina Lal) were very cordial and helpful in this endeavor.

Other FM Channels in Bangalore 

Did you know that there are two other FM channels accessible in Bangalore? Well, if you didn't, here they are: 101 MHz, 103 MHz.  Even though they are not 24 hour channels unlike FM 91, the programming is pretty neat. So tune in and rock away!

Hang on, there's a new FM channel on the waves! Amrutha Varshini – FM Indian Classical Music channel started in Bangalore on January 26, 2004.  Frequency: 107.6 MHz.

Download 

Radiocity Jingles (signature tunes) here: 

* Older Jingle: Radiocity FM91 Bangalore - Signature Tune @ 32kps.mp3 (69 KB file @ 32kbps, playtime 17 seconds)

* Newer Jingle ("City City Radio City...91 FM"): Radiocity FM91 Bangalore - Signature Tune @ 32kps.mp3 (74 KB file @ 32kbps, playtime 18 seconds)

Re-broadcasting Radiocity FM 91 Bangalore (or any other radio feed) 

Sometimes people do not have access to a radio but have access to computer and internet (!), and they would like to listen to their favourite local radio channels.  Well, you can help them as there's an easy solution.  I did that on  Monday, January 27, 2003 when I could successfully re-broadcast Radiocity FM 91 to whole campus LAN.  Man, winamp rules!! All I needed was:

(1) Shoutcast's DNAS server (v1.9.2) and 

(2) Shoutcast DSP Plug-in for Winamp (v1.8.2).

(3) Radio city feed from my Sony GR55

 

Doing this was great fun 'cause now I could even run my own radio station on LAN using my own music collection!! (I am behind a proxy server, so no broadcasting on Net :-( ).

 

(Fine Print, literally - Just for the record, this obviously was for fun/experimentation. So, anybody who might think that their commercial interests might be compromised due to this, please dont sue me :-)

 

Instructions on how to setup the broadcast are here and here.  So, go set up any radio feeds that you want and broadcast the same to your whole office and let productivity zoom up!  (LoL)

A small clarification

Please keep in mind that this solution / procedure is to re-broadcast radio city stream and and not to listen to it.  To just listen, you have to have someone already broadcasting the radio city /desired station feed on the Net, which is what the shoutcast server actually does!  So this procedure is useful only:

1) if you wanna help people on your LAN / office / campus etc (or even internet actually) to listen to radio city without having a radio.

2) If you yourself wanna listen to radio city in a location (lets say Location B) where you don't have access to a radio (but you have access to a radio and computer in some other location, lets say Location A).  In that case, you'd have to setup re-broadcast as above on Location A where you have access to the radio, and then connect to this server from the client computer at non-radio Location B!

I had to add this clarification as a number of people tried to set it up as above when all they wanted to do was to listen to the Radiocity FM 91.  For that purpose, as I said earlier, you need an already available feed (re-broadcast) URL, which to the best of my knowledge isn't there on the Net for Radiocity Bangalore. 

 

In my opinion, Radiocity FM 91 management should actually do it themselves. I mean they should make the feed available on the internet to enhance the reach of the channel.  I have heard from a number of Bangloreans who are now working abroad, and who wanna listen to their favourite channel  Radiocity while being abroad!  Well, too bad.  As of now, they'd have to wait until  Radiocity itself does it, or some individual with a private server and infrastructure does it!!

 

Even though I myself have stopped broadcasting Radiocity in campus, if you are in campus, you can listen to it here.

 

Update (Feb 28, 04): After one of the visitors to my site, Ajit Kartagi, offered to take care of the operating costs of Radicoity broadcast on the Net, I talked to radiocity about it.  Apparently, there's more to Net broadcasting costs than just technical infrastructure.  You see, RC (or any other Indian radio station) has to pay royalty per song to the The Indian Performing Right Society Limited and/or Phonographic Performance Ltd.  The (whole copyright issues are handled by the umbrella organization Indian Music Industry ). As it is, the private radio stations are not in good shape due to arbitrary licensing schemes by the government (see the linked articles at the end of page), Net broadcasting would further increases the cost to RC, and hence conditions are not favourable for them to broadcast it on the Net as of now. 

Radiocity Goodies in campus (Available only within the campus)

Contact Radiocity FM 91 Bangalore

# Address (Not sure if it's up-to-date).

  • MUSIC BROADCAST PVT LTD
    10, Hmg Ambassador, Richmond Road, 560025
    Tel: 080 - 22121963-71, 22488412,  22487390
    Fax: 080 - 22121972 

# Radiocity FM 91 Bangalore Email addresses:

  • bangalore AT myradiocity.com

  • Bhaskar Dutt, VP and Station Head
    E-mail: bhaskar AT myradiocity.com

  • OLD Addresses

    • feedback AT radiocityfm.net

    • request AT radiocityfm.net 

    • priyag AT radiocityfm.net (Priya Ganapati, RJ)

Some links on Radiocity/State of Private Radio in India



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 Last updated: Aug 25, 2005

Created: Sep 02, 2003