My Wierd Wired World

Via Reuters

Apart from the Filmfares and the Oscars, this week also saw another set of awards being doled out. The Red FM Bajaate Raho Awards 2007 were handed out a few days ago and before you start wondering what the hell are these awards, let me tell you that they’re somewhat similar to Hollywood’s Razzies. This awards (dis)honours ‘excellence in stupidity’, lauds nincompoopery, recognizes talent that has touched new lows….etc etc. Established by Mumbai’s popular FM Channel Red FM, these awards are in its third year.

The awards are presented across four categories viz. Bollywod, TV, Cricket & City but the fun part are the category segment names. Sample this: TV ke duniya se ‘hadd ho gayi’ award - won by the character Baa in the daily soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi; Sangeet ki duniya se ’sabse behtareen lyrics’ award - won by Gulzar for ticket to hollywood from the movie Jhoom Barabar Jhoom; Dilli di shaan award - won by the blue line buses!!! The biggest winner of the night was Ram Gopal Varma, who won two awards - the release se pehley superhit award for RGV ki Aag and Bravery award for daring to make Nishabd! Needless to say, none of the winners came forward to collect their awards

Read the entire nominations list here and the news article describing the awards here.

I was listening to some routine telugu songs on the jukebox today and wasn’t paying much attention to them initially. But as the playlist repeated some 3-4 times, I couldn’t help noticing that there were a few songs that had more than a fair sprinkling of Hindi lyrics in their midst! Now it is a known fact that of late many telugu songs have been incorporating hindi lines in their lyrics but this time the trend was much more predominant. Felt like I was listening to hindi songs with telugu lines in-between!

Investigation revealed that all of these songs were from the yet-to-be-released movie titled Chirutha (meaning Leopard??) starring Megastar Chiranjeevi’s son Ram Charan Tej. The music was by renowned music director Manisarma. Though the songs by themselves were of the foot-tapping and groovy type (not blockbusters, I must say!) the needless sprinkling of hindi all over the songs made them stand out that li’l bit. Sample this: “Twinkle twinkle little star aao aao mera pyaar…mere bahon me aa jaane jaana mujhe ishq me kar deewana ne nee to kalisi raana” or “ek bar ek bar dil ke paas aaja baar baar baar baar karle mazaa…ek baar ek baar pogariste pokiri….baar baar baar baar love kirkiri” !!!

To be fair to the lyricist/music dir, only three (or four?) songs have this seemingly excessive sprinkling of hindi therein. The rest of the songs are cool and are perfect examples of mass-y songs. This one will score big on the music front I think.

[Edit] I’ve found a PDF of the Lyrics here. Read for urself

I purchased the Sony Ericsson W200i phone yesterday - thanks to an adept pickpocket who nipped off my bro’s Nokia 6300 phone a few days ago ! After a lot of dilly-dallying and mulling over a few other notable (and yet affordable) models, we zeroed in on the cheapest (?) of the Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series - the W200i.

The W200i is a Triband GSM phone which comes in two colors - Rhythm Black and Pulse White. The white models looks elegant but is prone to getting dull and dirty whilst the black one looks sleek and snug. The design’s a bar-type (obviously!) and its quite diminutive compared to others in the Walkman series. It boasts of a 0.3MP VGA Camera with 4X digital zoom and Video recording, Java, FM Radio, Polyphonic Ringtones, Mp3 capability, Web browser, the works! Talktime is upto 7 hours with a standby time of 360 hours. It comes packed with 27 MB internal memory and an external memory slot with a 128MB memory card (included in the package) and is expandable upto 1GB

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Many people are curious as to how can they listen to FM stations broadcasts over their internet connections on their PC’s. I had posted one or two threads for the same but seems people don’t read them that well enough so for the benefit of those ‘lazy’ audience, I’ll take the trouble of informing them exactly how and what they need to listen to FM radio over the net. All they need to do is just post their message on the Contact form below…. (more…)

Well, Lotsa people have been clamoring to know abt how to become an RJ at my previous post on Radio Mirchi. Just to satiate those queries, I’m posting this topic…..

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT connected to any of the FM/Radio stations!!! (more…)

I fervently hope that this is my last post announcing the launch of an FM station in Hyderabad! What with all the nonsensical responses the other threads have been getting! So, cutting down to the chase, yet another FM Channel started broadcasting from Hyderabad. S FM started on the 93.5FM Frequency. This FM station belongs to the Sun Network.

The Sun Network is flagging off its second phase of FM radio stations under the brand name 93.5 SFM on November 6, 2006 starting with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Jaipur.The group has chosen the tagline ‘Vinnandi Vinnandi Ullasanga Utsahanga’ for the Hyderabad station

I had heard it for a while on Sunday night but I didn’t find it as enthralling as, say, Radio City 91.1 FM. The RJ’s sounded too eager and their newbie status was easily discernible. And also, they tend to shout a lot!!! Anyways, Hyderabad can now boast to be a Hot n’ happening market for the FM Channels and thatz always good news

Wanna tune into S FM over the Net? Click here to know how!

Nope! Thatz not a new Radio Station that is coming up in Hyderabad but the FOTM is: Radio City 106.4 FM is changing its broadcast frequency to 91.1 FM effective from ( I think!) 27th October.

After Radio Mirchi, which had earlier changed its frequency from 95 FM to 98.3 FM it is the turn of Radio City now! It makes sense however…since in most cities, Radio City operates on the 91 FM frequency. Wonder how it had to settle for the Point One tag after the ninety one! So all ye Radio City lovers in Hyderabad…remember to tune into 91.1 FM from 27th October hence…..

Update: Wanna tune into Radio City over the Net? Click here to know how!

P.S: Why do I write about FM radios so often? Traffic??

According to CtrlAltDel, a member of FreeHyderabad dicussion forums, Hyderabad has a new FM station since today morning :

A new FM channel 92.7 - no announcements/messages, just songs; yesterday morning Premadesam songs in a non-stop loop

A little bit of reseaarch and lo! I had the dope . FM 92.7 or Big FM as it is proposed to be called is the flagship FM channel of Reliance-Adlabs, the JV of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications and Manmohan Shetty’s AdLabs.

Anil Ambani chose to go on air from Hyderabad with his FM station Big 92.7 FM.

Just like the name conveys, Ambani Junior is aiming big and wants to be heard by 20 crore listeners, which means every fifth Indian across the country.

“A city of the size of Hyderabad compared to similar cities in America or Europe tends to have thirty radio stations in one city. Actually New York or LA has about a hundred stations and it is quite amazing that we live in the realm of about two or three stations,” said Tarun Katial, COO, Big 92.7 FM.

An interesting first for the FM station is television-like outdoor broadcast vans. Also 100 traffic wardens in Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai will report on traffic snarls. South Indian actress Asin is the brand ambassador of Big 92.7 FM.

“Let me just tell you one thing. Big 92.7 FM is big and it is going to rock,” said Asin.

The oxygen for any FM station are film songs and Big claims that it will play 40 per cent unduplicated music, which means no one else will play those songs.

Source

That is definitely good news for Hyderabadis who already have four FM stations to listen to - RadioCity, RadioMirchi, Vividh Bharati and FM Rainbow. And now with the launch of Big FM, Hyderabad joins the league of cities having multiple FM channels. The listener has never had it so good . What remains to be seen is the kind of music that Big FM plays. If its claims of playing unduplicated music is indeed true, then it could get a lot of listenership in pretty quick time. But, only time will tell……

Important: The Post on ‘Listen to Radio on the Net’ has been moved to my Blogspot Site

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I’ll be Frank here! Ever since Radio City launched in Hyderabad, I haven’t tuned into Mirchi. Maybe because I like listening to Hindi songs a lot more than telugu songs. But whereas City is lacking in exposure or publicity, Mirchi is going all-guns-blaring to make iself seen (or heard!). Starting July 25th, Radio Mirchi will be available ‘Visually’ off the Mobile handsets(Only Delhi initially)! I know that it is already available on Mobiles with FM receivers (just like mine!) but the difference here will be in the visuals. I presume some sorta graphics & interactivity will be involved! But hey, relax…it will work ONLY on GPRS enabled handsets And that will happen via VisualRadio.

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