Saturday 2 June 2012


BEING A RADIO JOCKEY



During childhood days, we used to have a contest called, “Just one minute”. Just a minute, was about talking on a particular topic for 60 seconds continuously; without taking a break or hesitate. It was fun. We used to have a similar show on television too.

You need confidence, gift of the gab and random knowledge to talk fluently. Of course there used to be a couple of friends, who never used to participate in such contests, but every now and then, they had loads of nonsense to talk and that too non stop. We used to call them chatter boxes too.

Such people were treated as a pain and most of us used to avoid their company because they are irritating at times.

Times change and every one has a reason to be here on the planet. True, all those who had the gift of the gab have at last found a worth while profession to make money for their non stop blabbering. Radio is where these birds with gab flock together.

It is not funny to talk for hours together, interacting with callers on the phone and pick up topics of various interests. The job of a Radio Jockey is not the cup of tea for all. Along with continuous presence of mind, you require a magical and appealing voice to hold the listener from not tuning into the next station.

But imagine, just talking could become a profession; was never dreamt of even a decade back. All we knew was that proper language and literary skills with grammar and phonetics could help someone get a job as a news reader. But today’s skill sets required for being a R J are altogether different. A R J requires, Spontaneity, sense of humor, patience and a lot more traits to become successful.

Radio channels pay a good RJ as high as 75 k per month starting from a basic range of 8K.
Apart from talking the RJ also does the job of a Disc Jockey by operating the Mike and the software that schedules the song list. They should be update with latest music and should be able to talk on music, artistes, actors, technicalities of films, reviews and so much more.

So to be an RJ all you need is just not gift of the GAB but a lot more.
If you are interested in this edge of the seat profession, I hope, you now know, what are the skill sets you need to equip with?