The Hindu Business Line : AIR to retail archived content to public

ALL India Radio (AIR), which has started archiving its recordings and selling some masterpieces on cassettes and CDs at AIR outlets in all the State Capitals, will shortly be appointing distributors for marketing these products at retail music outlets throughout the country.

The central archive in New Delhi has a collection of one lakh recordings of speeches of national leaders, performances of legendary musicians and all public addresses of Presidents and Prime Ministers.

"We have started selling some of these recordings, refurbished and well-packaged, to the public on cassettes and CDs," Mr K.S. Sarma, CEO of Prasar Bharati, told newspersons.

Prasar Bharati has taken up a project of compiling an inventory of audio and video recordings having archival value in all the AIR stations and Doordarshan kendras in the South.

To be based out of Hyderabad, the project will not be limited to classical music but will include "immensely valuable and popular devotional, folk, light and patriotic music".

The corporation needs to digitise the data stored in spools as the quality of the content is getting diminished.

"We will release the first set of recordings on cassettes and CDs covering major artistes from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the next two months," Mr Sarma said.

The corporation has already set up a unit under the marketing division of AIR in Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, the corporation has decided to felicitate 30 senior top-grade artistes. Each of these artistes will be presented with a cash award of Rs 1 lakh.

Nedunuri Krishanamurthy and M. Balamamuralikrishna have been selected from Andhra Pradesh in this regard.

Prasar Bharati is planning to organise a function in Hyderabad next month.

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