Home > History & Culture > Pakistani Music > Requiem for a falling giant
The days of Radio Pakistan appear to be numbered. The medium wave channel that, through well over half a century, remained a mainstay of people’s lives and provided everything from news and crop season reports to song, poetry and drama, is rapidly falling silent: without warning — even to people working in the channel — Radio Pakistan Karachi has been switched off and the broadcast hours of Radio Pakistan Lahore have (on medium wave) been reduced to a pitiable 30 minutes a day. The reason appears to be the compounded problems of aging medium-wave transmitters, and the challenge offered by the FM stations. Instead of updating its equipment and pulling up its socks, the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation appears to be in the process of letting Radio Pakistan sink without a trace, all requiems left unsung.
That makes many people, including myself, very sad indeed. True, the modern era of FM channels that belt out music with flawless sound quality are fun. But who can deny the romance of the old Radio Pakistan days: the distant scratchy sound of Noor Jehan from across the street, the national anthem on drums and brass followed by ‘Yeh Radio Pakistan hai...’ were indicators that all was as it should be in the world. Anyone who has spent time in rural areas would in particular testify to this romance: the radio would ceremoniously be turned on for the news, which would then be discussed threadbare in the gathering gloom as the civilised tones of the evening’s presenter introduced dramas and other programmes that were written by some of the best the country had to offer.
You can accuse me of being needlessly nostalgic, but for a great many people in Pakistan, this is the sort of emotion Radio Pakistan invokes. It is difficult to remain cynically detached when one reads about the channel’s earliest broadcasts, for example. Nihal Ahmad has this to say in his admirable book ‘The History of Radio Pakistan’ (2005):
‘At midnight of 14 August 1947, Pakistan appeared on the political map of the world as a sovereign state. Radio Pakistan (then known as Pakistan Broadcasting Service) went on air for the first time. The last announcement of AIR [All India Radio] from the Lahore Station was made at 11pm. An hour later, the newly composed signature tune of Pakistan Broadcasting Service was played and Zahur Azar made the following announcement:
‘‘At the stroke of twelve midnight the independent sovereign state of Pakistan will come into existence.’
‘At midnight, he made another announcement: ‘This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service, Lahore. We now bring to you a special programme on ‘The dawn of Independence’. It was immediately followed by an Urdu translation by Mustafa Ali Hamdani.’’
Similar introductory announcements were made from the Peshawar and Dhaka radio stations, says Mr Ahmad. The country had inherited three low-power medium wave regional stations from undivided India, one each at Lahore, Peshawar and Dhaka. Karachi, then the capital of the country, had no transmitter at the time.
Right after partition, Radio Pakistan became a vital link for separated families and friends, and for displaced persons. From August 27, 1947, ‘the Lahore station started a regular service for refugees, broadcasting messages from people trying to locate lost ones. Information on the status of displaced persons was also given. Special staff was hired to receive messages at the gate, on the telephone and at the refugee camps. These were scrutinised and then broadcast,’ writes Mr Ahmad. ‘The SOS service continued for about seven months till the end of March 1948. During this period about 36,900 SOS messages were broadcast.’
From there began the glory days of Radio Pakistan, which for decades continued to be a vital part of life in rural and urban areas. All that is changing now. True, many of the medium wave programmes in Karachi and Lahore have been switched over to FM channels. Yet, it must be remembered, powerful though the FM transmitters may be, they cover a range of only 30 to 40 kilometres, as opposed to the hundreds of kilometres covered by MW.
The issue is discussed in detail in two articles by Alefia T. Hussain, ‘. . . aap say mukhatib nahin hai’ and ‘Yeh Radio Pakistan hai’:
‘It seems the Radio Pakistan Lahore has put money matters before popularity and public service,’ she writes. ‘[...] ‘MW can provide audiences at the regional levels as opposed to local, and their numbers can be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions,’ says Adnan Rehmat, Media analyst and Country Director of Internews.
‘The potential audiences of the station, he elaborates, included both the heavy urban demographic in Punjab as well as the wide swathes of rural provincial heartland. ‘Closing down or even a scale-back of operations create dead broadcast space that leave information absence. If the broadcasts have been ceased or restricted, it should only be on the basis of a paucity of listening audiences.’
‘He asks, ‘Were there audience surveys done on listenership to inform the decision to restrict broadcasts? If yes, these should be shared. If they weren’t done, then potentially large audiences were betrayed.’
‘According to him, in the last five years local-level independent radio has caught on big time with audiences across vast swathes of Pakistan. ‘There are over 200 FM stations in the private sector licensed in Pakistan over half of which are on air and doing reasonable to roaring business. These stations have weaned away audiences from the state-run radio because of more relevant, more local and more hip information and programming. The government seems to be giving up the idea of improvement in programmes in favour of simply stop operating meaningfully.’
‘The role of a public domain state-run radio station, as Rehmat aptly points out, is several-fold: it attempts to reach out for large audiences and address a wider variety of issues, such as farming, trading, health and more that may not be commercially viable for local stations. Basically, of educating segments on issues that find little commercial appeal but serve a critical role in addressing major information gaps.’
Ms Hussain has identified the crux of the matter. FM radio stations are all very well, but they are run on a primarily commercial basis and their relatively short broadcast range allows them to reach only a small — mainly urban —section of the country’s population. The value of MW channels — especially one run on a non-commercial basis such as Radio Pakistan — lies in not only being able to reach thousands upon thousands of people, but of having the ability to air programmes that need not have a commercial value. An example of this is a radio programme created and packaged some years ago by the NGO Aurat Foundation. Written in a drama format targeting women in rural areas, the programme presented hard information on matters such as animal husbandry, basic health and hygiene, nutrition and crop farming. By placing fictional characters in a real-world situation (such as, for example, a sick cow or a child with particular symptoms), the programme imparted information and solutions (such as the symptoms of dehydration or fever, the help that can be offered by Basic Health Units, the advantages of seeing a trained doctor rather than the village medicine-man).
The reach and influence of radio, particularly medium wave, is immense. Indeed, it was the first mass medium to be invented and has, as such, influenced the way other mass media have developed. Take television programmes, for instance, most of which — whether news or entertainment — rely on the viewers ability to tune in every week to the same programme, thus allowing them to build a familiarity with the presenters or the show’s characters and their situations. The series, sitcom and serial format, which are today the mainstay of television entertainment programming, were created by the radio since it was the first mass medium — unlike theatre, by contrast — that allowed listeners to return to the same show every week.
The radio was also seminal to the so-called Battle of Algiers. On Nov 1, 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) issued its first communiqué announcing the start of the struggle to free Algeria from French control. The communiqué, which was in French, was aired over Egypt’s ‘Voice of the Arabs’ radio — Gamal Abdul Nasser was sympathetic to the Algerian cause.
After that first broadcast, the radio was to play a significant role in the anti-colonist struggle in the Algiers. As France become increasingly violent in its efforts to stamp out the FLN, the resistance started communicating with the general public through clandestine radio broadcasts. Progress reports, messages of solidarity and calls for support were aired on different frequencies, with the time and channel of the next broadcast given at the end of every ‘programme’. Media theorists believe that in this way, the FLN managed not only to keep its own communications going but also keep sympathisers informed and the citizenry committed to the cause of liberation.
Here in Pakistan, we have our own example of Fazlullah aka Maulana Radio, who spewed his vitriolic ideology through radio broadcasts that for some unfathomable reason, the state did not think of intercepting until it was far too late. One cannot help but wonder how different the situation would have been had he not hit upon that particular idea. It wasn’t the radio that created or even articulated the particular and peculiar set of ideas that had taken hold in Fazlullah’s mind, of course. It wasn’t the radio itself that was holding hostage an entire population. But it cannot be denied that the medium helped him and his gang consolidate their power and spread their hate ideology faster than would otherwise have been the case.
In the example of Fazlullah we have encapsulated the danger in letting medium wave, state-run, Radio Pakistan die. As it goes off air, it leaves vast swathes of the country in an informational abyss that any party can then step into, without fearing competition from more tolerant quarters. Privately-run FM channels will have little interest in the ruralites since they offer little opportunity for revenue generation. But those thousands of citizens would be of great interest for any individual or group that wants to fill their ears and minds with their own brand of nonsense.
By letting Pakistan Radio die, the state stands in danger of losing its link with millions of its citizens. And, it stands to lose an important method of challenging any usurper of the country’s liberal cultural space |
