When Radio Meets Cell Phone. :)

The Radio and the Cell Phone service providers are now married to each other.
One of the most exasperating things about the Radio is the preposterous SMS contests they come up with.
Like one day the peppy Radio Jockey started a contest that made people choose which planet Pune resembled to out of the three options
1.Moon
2.Saturn
3.Mars
(Yes, and he said “planets” and included Moon in it!)
And supposedly the popular (and predictable) choice was Moon because of the potholes on Pune’s roads.
Then there is this “Home-maker special” at around 11 AM that is called “khoobsurat”
Where the chirpy RJ asks listeners to take part in contests related to beauty IQ
Like “ What from these three options makes your hair shinier”
1.Potato
2.Kerosene
3.Egg White
And then they keep repeating the question throughout the program in their fake chirpy voice. Imagine pouring a can of kerosene on your scalp!
I always wonder who responds to such questions and when I realize that someone always does I choose to believe that they prefer being pathetic than not being the fiftieth desperate person competing for two couple tickets to an equally low budget movie.
I mean what is so honorable about answering such questions and winning a ticket?
Besides even if you do win it, the radio people make you travel to their faraway office to collect it and then you drive to the cinema which is like the other end of the city from the radio office. I guess it would be easier to just go to the cinema and book two tickets with all your self-respect intact than showing the world that you are aware about the conditioning characteristics of egg whites.

They even host polls!
By what year do you think Salman Khan will go completely bald?
A.2012
B.2020
C.2200
D.Cannot Decide
I mean, give me a break! People should be more concerned about the hair on their own respective heads. They pay thrice the amount required for a normal SMS to answer such pointless polls. What is with the “cannot decide” option? What do they do with the database of people who are in two minds about the exact prediction of Salman Khan’s baldness?

When they are not making up contests that always seem to defy logic, they play Himesh Reshammiya every thirty minutes. If you try to switch the channel you get Himesh bhai at every alternate station.
You have the option of making every new song your dialer tone (This is a novel concept where instead of the usual ring-ring people get to listen to a song when they call you. With due respect to Sai baba bhajans sung by Anoop Jalota, Sanskrit Couplets in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice, Mind Numbing Rock songs and all the omnipresent nasal Nusrat Fateh Ali khan sound-alikes, ring-ring sounds much more melodious sometimes.:P)

It is like the Radio no longer plays for the common man.
It plays for the film producers who get us close to nausea playing their mediocre albums over and over two weeks before the movie starts showing.
It plays for Supermarkets with surreptitious discount schemes
It plays for the cell phone companies that make idiots out of innocent customers
It plays for wannabe RJs who dream of sitting inside the cool studio wearing donut shaped headphones
Sometimes when you think of a song and like telepathy, the radio plays it out the next moment! I used to savor such moments but with this new generation of avaricious and exceedingly daft radio stations I don’t find an intuitive connection with the Radio anymore. =(