All India Radio grew out of the Radio Club of Bombay's 1923 broadcasts and the Indian Broadcasting Company (1927). After that company failed, the government's…
The Radio Club of Bombay broadcast programmes in June 1923. Calcutta's club followed in November 1923 and the Madras Presidency Radio Club in July 1924.
Lord Irwin opened the Indian Broadcasting Company's Bombay station on 23 July 1927, and India's first radio news bulletin went out that day. The company went into liquid…
On 8 June 1936 the Indian State Broadcasting Service was renamed All India Radio. Delhi's station had aired its first news bulletin on 19 January.
India kept six stations after Partition, reaching about 11% of the population. On 12 November 1947 Gandhi spoke to Partition refugees at Kurukshetra from AIR's Delhi stu…
Minister B.V. Keskar had pushed film songs off AIR, and listeners switched to Radio Ceylon's Binaca Geetmala. AIR answered with Vividh Bharati on 3 October 1957.
An experimental television service began from Delhi on 15 September 1959 as part of AIR. It became a separate department, Doordarshan, on 1 April 1976.
Indira Gandhi announced the Emergency on AIR on 26 June 1975. In 1976, according to the Shah Commission, Kishore Kumar's songs were kept off AIR after he refused to sing…
AIR's first FM service began in Madras on 23 July 1977, fifty years to the day after the Bombay station opened.
Prasar Bharati came into existence on 23 November 1997 with Akashvani and Doordarshan as its constituents, seven years after the Act was passed. The 100th AIR station ha…
A May 2023 order told stations to stop saying All India Radio on air, enforcing the Prasar Bharati Act's name. Today the network reaches 99.19% of India's population.
Read the complete story, FAQs and key facts.