All India Radio Is Only 'Akashvani' Now. Experts Weigh In With A Note Of Caution

National broadcaster Prasar Bharati's move to direct all the departments concerned to ensure that All India Radio is referred to only as "Akashvani" in accordance with the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990 is a major move in its history.

Apart from the official order, the policy division of the public broadcaster has also sent a message to all station heads on Wednesday saying as per the stationary provision of the act, the radio vertical of Prasar Bharti is officially known as Akashvani, and instructed heads to use the term Akashvani "wherever applicable in all announcements going on air."

"..Further the term, Akashvani may be used invariably in all official communication. Accordingly, the announcement in English should go like..'this is akashvani in place of this is All India Radio' and the pattern be followed in other languages with immediate effect."

Some experts that NDTV spoke with have suggested caution, and not doing away with 'AIR' entirely, as although the act refers to the use of Akashvani, All India Radio is cemented in the minds of listeners, and is important for brand recall and recognition.

Others, while suggesting that the move may not have any fallout, said it was however important to harmonise the branding, as it is known worldwide by All India Radio or AIR and its app, website, and most importantly the logo, have the initials 'AIR'.

The order issued by Prasar Bharati said that Section 2(a) of the PB Act that came into force on November 15, 1997, says that "Akashvani" means all the offices, stations, and other establishments which are or were under the Director-General All India Radio of the Information & Broadcasting Ministry.

The Prasar Bharati website says that broadcasting in India started about 13 years before the AIR came into existence.

The history of the national broadcaster says that on June 8, 1936, the Indian State Broadcasting Service became All India Radio and the Central News Organisation came into existence in August 1937. "In the same year, AIR came under the Department of Communications and four years later came under the Department of Information and Broadcasting. In 1956, the name Akashvani was adopted for the national broadcaster," the website said.

Image guru Dilip Cherian said the insistence on the use of Akashvani instead of All India Radio is in line with the often-witnessed push for Bharatiyata (Indian-ness) and wanting to avoid certain parts of the nomenclature.

"The consumer is left cold here. If there is a new product, a rebranding allows it to address a new audience which had either abandoned it or was never addressed by it. So the only option Prasar Bharati has now is to enhance the content which justifies the new branding."

"Plus, there is a lot of 'not invented here' going on, and brands cannot be led by that. The consumer is not interested in who is taking credit for inventing something," he said. Mr Cherian added that when one does a brand change, 80 per cent of it is outward facing but 20 per cent of it is inward facing. "How do you feel when you go home and tell people the company that you work for has been rebranded, is important here."

Brand consultant and author Santosh Desai said rebranding gets more difficult when there is a legacy involved, and this move is likely to be received differently in different parts of the country.

"More than a brand question, it is also a political question, if there is a move to push Hindi uniformly across the country. The general principle is that if one name is deeply entrenched in the minds of the people, as opposed to the new one that doesn't resonate as much, or doesn't have any additional reason of being, people tend to call it by the older name. In this case, Akashwani is popular, and so is AIR. So the changeover might not be that significant in states that speak Hindi."

There are also others who feel this is not an issue that can cause any major consequence, but have pointed to other areas of concern such as the national broadcaster's identity in global broadcasting associations, because it also broadcasts in 11 foreign languages, apart from English.

Shashi Shekhar Vempati, a former CEO of Prasar Bharati, said the move will not cause any problem, as all the announcements in regional languages have been using "Akashvani" for some years now. "The brand recall, therefore, has always been Akashvani. In only English news broadcast, it was All India Radio. Now, making it Akashvani will only bring more consistency. Foreign language announcements anyway have a very distinct branding to them. In the case of Bengali, it is called Akashvani Maitree which is a joint service with Bangladesh."

The move brings consistency with the Act, he said. "The language in the act clearly says Akashvani, so 'All India Radio' persisted for so long itself is an anomaly. English is a very small portion of the gamut of content that Akashvani produces," he said.

He, however, said it was important to harmonise the brand to avoid multiple ways of branding the broadcaster, mainly as the logo, app and, website still have only 'AIR'. "It will help if we bring in a single branding, instead of using AIR, All India Radio and Akashvani."

Former DG of the AIR Fayyaz Sheheryar said that Akashvani is used for all broadcasts except those in English and 26 channels of the External Services Division beaming content in various foreign and Indian languages that are spoken widely abroad such as Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu, Sindhi, Saraiki among others.  

"Akashvani is a better nomenclature as it is taken from our epics and is centred in our context. But it is difficult to obliterate the very first name (AIR) that is deeply ingrained in the minds, particularly when it comes to organisations such as Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and others. A lot will have to be done to introduce Akashvani as the only name now for All India Radio in many areas at home and particularly abroad," he added.