Pune A 792 All India Radio launched news-on-phone service on 25 February 1998 in New Delhi; it now has service

in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Indore, Patna and Bangalore. The service is accessible through STD, ISD and local calls. There are plans to e stablish the service in 11 more cities: Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Guwahati, Gwalior, Ja balpur, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ranchi, Simla and Thiruvanthapuram. English an d Hindi hourly news bulletins may be heard live.[10] News in MP3 format may be d irectly played from the site, and filenames are time-stamped. AIR news bulletins are available in nine regional languages (Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Ma rathi, North East, Punjabi, Telugu and Urdu). Direct-to-home service Direct-to-home (DTH) service is offered on 21 channels via Insat. Documentaries There is a long tradition of documentary features on AIR. There is great interes t in radio documentaries, particularly in countries like India, Iran, South Kore a and Malaysia. This format has been revived because of its flexibility, cost-cu tting capacity, messaging potential and creative potential with producers such a s Chitra Narain, R. G. Narula and Danish Iqbal. Iqbal has brought his experience as a drama producer to the documentary field; his documentary "Yeh Rishta Kya K ehlata Hai" makes effective use of narrative and ambient sounds. The documentary is a heartfelt account of an unseen bridge between a Kashmiri, Shikarah Wala, a nd his auto rickshaw-driver friend in Delhi. Although they never met, their unse en bond transcends the barriers of political, religious and regional prejudice. Because Narula, Chitra and Danish had a long tenure at Delhi and creative collab oration with media institutes, their influence is seminal in shaping the thinkin g of their colleagues. Chitra and Narula were rewarded for their work, and Danis h twice received the Public Service Broadcasting Award for his documentaries. Central Drama Unit AIR's Central Drama Unit is responsible for the national broadcast of plays. Pla ywrights and producers such as Chiranjeet, Satyendra Sharat, Nirmala Agarwal and Danish Iqbal has been associated with the department. Plays produced by the CDU are translated and produced by regional stations. Since its inception in the 19 60s the unit has produced more than 1,500 plays, and the CDU is a repository of old scripts and productions. The National Programme of Plays is broadcast by the CDU of AIR the fourth Thursday of each month at 9.30 pm. On the National Progra mme of Plays, the same play is produced in 22 Indian languages and broadcast at the same time by all regional and national network stations. The CDU also produc es Chain Plays, half-hour dramas broadcast in succession by a chain of stations. Controversy During his broadcasts from Azad Hind Radio, Subhas Chandra Bose referred to preindependence AIR as Anti Indian Radio. It is believed by some[by whom?] that the theme music for All India Radio was composed by violinist V. G. Jog. However, i t is also known that the Czechoslovak composer Walter Kaufmann supervised the We stern Music Department at AIR during the 1930s. Although he did not compose the signature tune as such, an excerpt from one of his sonatas (played by violinist Mehli Mehta, father of conductor Zubin Mehta) later became the signature tune fo r AIR. According to other sources, the tune (played on the violin, viola and tam bura) was composed by John Foulds. The harmonium was banned for broadcasts durin g the same period. Kolkata Centre of All India Radio shortwave in khz and fm in mhz 792 kHz

101.0 MHz All India Radio Pune (AIR Pune / Akashvani Pune) University Road Shivaji Nagar PUNE 411005 Maharashtra Tel: +91 20 25536444