HAVING MY SAY - When Radio Smelt Like Magnetic Tape
Legacy Hardware. Updated Software.
Good God! Has it been three decades?!
I might qualify as a dinosaur by the math, but I'd like to believe, I don't think like one. Let's just say I'm legacy hardware, with the required software updates along the way :)
This is the first instalment of Having My Say, a six-part skim through thirty-odd years of my personal journey in Indian commercial FM radio broadcasting. The people who built it with duct tape and stubbornness, and how I personally went from cueing up ¼ inch tape spools to chatting with AI chatbots about my own obsolescence.
Buckle up. It's going to be irreverent, occasionally unflattering, and — I promise — a lot of fun.
Stumblin' in ...
I stumbled into broadcasting almost entirely by pure chance in the mid-90s.One minute I was pursuing a double major in Microbiology and Bioethics. The next, I was being irresistibly pulled toward a heady mix of music and performance art that is broadcast radio.
No regrets. None. Commercial FM radio in India was just beginning to find its feet. So was I.
Living the Analogue Life
The early years found me dabbling in hosting and producing shows for Times FM and broadcasting "hot live" from the mint-green-walled studios of All India Radio. For anyone born after the invention of Wi-Fi, let me explain what that meant. Everything was analogue. And I mean everything.
Recorded commercials lived on quarter-inch spool tapes that had to be physically transported from the Times of India office to the AIR studios. Scripts were handwritten. Song intros were timed manually. Not approximately. Not close enough. Precisely. You would timestamp the intro down to the second, sometimes the fraction of a second, calculating exactly how long you had to speak before the vocals came crashing in. Get it right and it felt glorious. A tiny hit of dopamine before dopamine became a marketing strategy.
Radio 101
The art of music radio wasn't simply speaking. It was a fine-tuned choreography of thinking and reacting on the fly, mastering rapid hand eye coordination and timing the playout of music. You learnt to ride faders instinctively. You learnt to read silence. You learnt to stretch a sentence when something wasn't ready and cut one short when technology decided to throw a tantrum.
And technology threw plenty of tantrums. One particular memory remains permanently etched into my brain. Picture this. You've just delivered the perfect build-up to a song. Your energy is high. Your timing is immaculate. The audience is leaning in. And then AIR's "robust enterprise level" CD player decides this would be an excellent moment to skip to the next track.
Live. On air. In real time.
No editing. No retakes. No deleting the evidence. Just you, a microphone, and the growing realization that thousands of listeners have just heard the train come off the tracks. The trick was never avoiding mistakes. The trick was learning to cover up with the smooth glibness of a serial sinner at the confessional. Broadcasting teaches you all those valuable life skills:
If you smile while the wheels are falling off, most people won't notice.
Most. Not all.
There was also this wonderfully conscientious AIR staff member who would amble into the studio to do her due diligence right when my story was peaking. Her arrival was always announced by the unmistakable sound of dozens of glass bangles clinking loudly as she caroused the room. Nothing sharpens your focus quite like trying to host a live segment while menacingly eyeballing a jangly distraction.
Now that's Radio 101.
If We Are Being Honest ...
Let's slip in an honest revelation here about our competition. We all had to share the same frequency during that experimental phase. They (Radio Mid-Day) chose to air their recorded content off an MD player (Gen Z, Google "Minidisc"). I must admit to moments of youthful competitiveness that inspired elaborate fantasies involving thwarting that device.
Relax. I never actually followed through.
Mostly because I lacked the courage. Partly because I knew karma worked faster than broadcast engineering.
No Shortcuts. No Automation. Just Instinct, and Happy Disasters.
No shortcuts. No automation. No AI-generated show prep. No analytics dashboard telling you what worked. Just pure instinct, craft, repetition and the occasional disaster. What we lacked in technology we made up for in ingenuity. What we lacked in resources we compensated for with enthusiasm. And what we lacked in experience we borrowed from the people who generously shared theirs.
No career is built alone. Mine certainly wasn't. Along the way, I was fortunate enough to learn from and be supported by remarkable individuals who saw potential long before I did. Can't recount the journey without doffing my hat to the people who propped me up.
Vineet Jain, G Krishnan (GK), Chandni Sahgal the late Irshwin Balwani, Kalyan Sundaram, Fawzia Madni and Mr. Arora.
In fact, Chandni deserves an essay entirely of her own. Every industry has its legends. She was one of ours. Her razor-sharp business acumen and tough love is stuff of Times FM folklore.
Grit, Grunt, Glam
When people romanticize radio, they often remember the glamour. The celebrity interviews. The giveaways. The concerts. The public visibility. What they don't see are the countless invisible hours spent mastering a craft. The repetitive work. The technical failures. The near misses. The tiny victories. The moments that teach you how to think on your feet and trust your instincts.
Timing. Curiosity. Listening. Storytelling.
Technology changes.
BUT fundamentals stay the same.
The equipment was analogue. The mistakes were human. The learning was priceless.
And nobody had yet invented a button marked "Undo."
Why This Matters to You
If you're in the industry today, this is the unglamorous, ferociously analogue world that modern Indian radio grew out of.
If you're an outsider curious about how broadcast worked before everything went digital, this is your backstage pass.
And if you're a potential collaborator wondering whether the founder behind Loca Voca Media has lived the medium she talks about — yes.
From spools to software. Every inch of it.
Next up…
The government decides to open the airwaves to private players, the math gets botched spectacularly, and a proof-of-concept project in Indore quietly becomes the blueprint for what is now India's leading radio network.
Stay tuned. Pun very much intended.
Disclaimer
A Note on Memory, Memoir, and Sometimes Imperfect Recall
Three decades is a long time. Names blur. Dates wander. Conversations might elevate with age. Some stories may have acquired a little more polish than they originally deserved. A few names or places may have escaped my memory entirely, while others may have suffered the occasional creative overkill.
None of that is intentional.
These essays aren't fiction, nor are they intended to be a definitive history of Indian radio. They're simply my recollection of a wonderfully chaotic journey, told through the unreliable but well-meaning lens of my memory. To every colleague, mentor, producer, engineer, executive, intern, artist, listener and fellow troublemaker who shared any part of this adventure—thank you.
If I've forgotten to mention you, blame the passage of time, not the affection. After all, this is just a quick skim through three decades. The full memoir would require considerably more coffee (or something stronger 😊).
Corrections—and "actually, that's not quite how it happened" messages—are always welcome in the comments. I promise to take them with grace, a little defensiveness, and absolutely zero edits to the original post.
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