Page 21 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

8<< Introduction

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and brought about a nearly complete ban on film songs. While Keskar
attempted to create “light music”—with lyrics of “high literary and moral
quality” and music that would steer away from the “tendency to combine
western and eastern music as was done in Hindi films”—listeners began to
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tune in to Radio Ceylon for Indian film songs. As one oft-quoted survey of
listener preferences noted, “out of ten households with licensed radio sets,
nine were tuned to Radio Ceylon and the tenth set was broken.” Recogniz-
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ing the enduring popularity of film songs and acknowledging the difficul-
ties involved in forging a new “taste public,” Keskar relented and on Octo-
ber 28, 1957 announced the launch of a new variety program called Vividh
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Bharati that would “consist of popular music and other light items.” The
press release also pointed out that of five hours’ programming on week days,
nearly four hours would be dedicated to film songs.
This was, without doubt, a struggle over defining “national culture,” and
as David Lelyveld points out, government-controlled All India Radio was
expected to play “a leading role in integrating Indian culture and raising
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standards.” However, this narrative, in which Radio Ceylon makes a brief
appearance, does not shed light on any other aspect of the film industry’s
relationship with radio. How did producers, music directors, and playback
singers react to All India Radio’s policies? How exactly did the overseas pro-
gramming division of a commercially operated broadcasting station from
Colombo establish ties with the Bombay film industry? What role did adver-
tisers play? And what was the production process for various film-based
radio programs?
In 1951, Radio Ceylon established an agency in the Colaba area of down-
town Bombay—Radio Advertising Services—in order to attract advertising
revenue and recruit professional broadcasters who could record both com-
mercials and programs. It was through this agency, headed by Dan Molina,
an American entrepreneur who had lived and traveled across the subcon-
tinent, that Ameen Sayani and a small group of producers and writers cre-
ated a number of film-based radio programs, including the hit countdown
show Binaca Geet Mala. Sponsored by a Swiss company named CIBA and
using two powerful shortwave transmitters located in Colombo, Geet Mala
was initially produced as a half-hour competition program in which seven
random film songs were broadcast each week with audiences invited to rear-
range the songs chronologically. With a hundred rupees as the jackpot each
week, the show attracted immediate attention and, according to Ameen
Sayani, “the very first program, broadcast on December 3, 1952, brought
in a mail of 9,000 letters and within a year, the mail shot up to 65,000 a
week.” Recognizing the difficulties of the competition format, Sayani and