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Radio Pakistan through its
31 stations located at as many places in the country as on air for more than
300 hours daily in the Home Service using 21 languages and reaches
80% of the area and 96.5% of the population of the country. Nearly half
the time is devoted to information and education and remaining half
to entertainment. In its programme-fare PBC makes use of all the formats
in order to reach its listeners by catering to their interests. Programme
fare is a balanced combination of information entertainment specially
music and education. General programme categories are music (48%),
religious (12.5%), News and current affairs (25%), Women Children
and Labour (5%), Youth-Students (3%), Forces (2%), Rural & Farm
(10%),Drama/Features (2%), Publicity Campaigns (2%) and Science, Technology,
Health (2%) and Sports (2.5%). Radio gives special attention to sports
because in games like Cricket and Squash, Pakistan produced players
whose international records cannot be easily broken. Jehangir Khan
and Jan Sher Khan are such players who won all the international Squash
matches for years together.
MUSIC
continues to remain the dominant feature of Radio Pakistan entertainment
programmes. Composers as well as fans of music have always recognized
the contribution made by Radio Pakistan in producing artists who
excelled in all genres of music including classical, light, folk,
qawali, pop and instrumental. All those artists who are famous today
in Pakistan and abroad owe their early artistic development and
training to Radio Pakistan. Above all, it was radio which was instrumental
in popularizing film music in the early 50's and 60's and later
the 'Ghazal ' singing in which the leadership of Radio Pakistan
remains unchallenged even today. Radio is the real abode of all
those who are touching the heights of fame today whether it is music
in the oriental tradition, sounds blended with spirituality or music
born out of synthesis of oriental and modern popular music. One
such artist, the foundations of whose fame were laid by Radio was
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for whom the international magazine 'TIME'
wrote in its September '97 issue that:
"His mesmerizing voice captured fans worldwide when he teamed
up with British pop stat Peter Gabriel and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder,
earning him a 1996 Grammy nomination for his work on the soundtrack
of Dead Man walking. He was a cultural ambassador in South Asia.
His piercing interpretations of qawwali-mystical Sufi Muslim poetry
set to music- were steeped in personal history. London's clubs are
still busy in pumping out Khan's dance remixes and his cassettes
will remain as powerful musical legacy".
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