AIR Chennai takes the visual and text route to stay relevant and heard

A bouquet of recent initiatives by All India Radio Chennai parallels the novelty, and even innocuous

A bouquet of recent initiatives by All India Radio Chennai parallels the novelty, and even innocuous irregularity of an ascetic sworn to a life of silence surfacing from soundlessness to go on a tour gregariously talking to audiences about why he would rather stay silent than spout opinions. The upshot of the exercise is to get people to understand and appreciate the eloquence of a zipped mouth, and its benefits: Peace at home, work and in the neighbourhood.

Radio is about disembodied voices and facelessness — not lack of personality, though. AIR Chennai is trying to disturb that perception, much like that silent ascetic holding that mike between his thumb and index finger just to drive home why silence matters.

The government-run radio major is actually trying to “pixelate” the entrenched perception of it dealing only in voices.

Trying to explain the move in the context of managing her section’s (news) YouTube channel, Leela Meenatchi, Joint Director News, Regional News Unit, All India Radio Chennai, wears the hat of a “consumer perception analyst”.

Interviews with any authority figures as part of news coverage would earlier be uploaded on to the YouTube channel and the audio file would run accompanied only by the static visual of an AIR logo.

Leela notes nobody would really want to watch that video — actually, an audio file masquerading as a video — though the content might be of interest to them. And she goes as far as to remark that she shares their sentiment.

So, it was decided that videos of such conversations or interviews would go into AIR Chennai’s YouTube channel.