Down with variety

Variety is the spice of life, so they say. But, in the Indian entertainment business, it's bad for your bottomline. A good example is the recent case of Go 92.5 FM.

Go was a radio station that played a good amount of English music. The rest of the private radio stations in Mumbai play entirely Hindi music, and that too only recent stuff. You don't get too much of classic Hindi music during prime time. Then all of a sudden, Go decides to switch to playing only Hindi music. Now, with the Himesh fixation, browsing through channels is like Himesh, some other silly song, Himesh, some stupid remix, Himesh again, and All India Radio(AIR), the public broadcaster.

Now, we have lost seriously nice programs like "The Night Shift", which played quality English classics, and even had a special hour devoted to rock music.

The only oasis left in this desert is AIR, which still plays a few hours of English music. It even plays Western Classical, cool. And somebody said that private companies are better than government-controlled ones?

Probably, the only reason that AIR still plays western music, is that, being state-controlled, it doesn't have to fight for survival. So, it doesn't have to worry about mass appeal. A real pity actually.

Let's hope the policy for granting licences to radio stations changes to improve the variety of programs we get to hear.