From home, with love

For Pakistanis living in Houston, Urdu radio stations bring a little bit of their own language and culture every day.

Driving out to their office, one can see the billboards for Hum Tum Radio — one of Houston’s few Pakistani radio stations — on the main highways of Houston. Broadcasting to over 100,000 Pakistanis in the Houston area, the radio station, now in existence for over a decade, has thousands of listeners who tune in on their radios, or on the Internet, where one can listen to their live stream.

As we walk in, the station’s radio jockey Lubna Jamshed, who is also the head of marketing, is in the midst of her radio show, talking to her audience about family issues. She listens to their comments and offers her own two cents in a calm and soothing voice. Her show, broadcast in the afternoon, is primarily a talk show — she selects a subject for the day and asks callers to weigh in on it, while also playing popular Pakistani and Indian songs at regular intervals.

“They call me the Pakistani Oprah Winfrey,” laughs Jamshed, who moved from Lahore to Houston ten years ago. Speaking in a mix of Urdu and English, this radio jockey says she likes to highlight the problems and issues of the Pakistani community. “We’ve talked about dowry, domestic abuse, divorces, relationships between family members, etc.”

Jamshed says she gets up to 30 callers during her four-hour-long show. “We live so far away from home, it is important to talk about these issues while we live here.”

The Hum Tum Radio office is covered with posters of their shows, and events that the station has organised in the area. Concerts of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and other events are featured prominently, as are pictures of the station’s owner Rehan Siddiqui with former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. The station has four radio jockeys in total, and broadcasts 24 hours all week. During Ramazan, the station also carries out special transmissions for its listeners.

Shazia Khan is another popular radio jockey at Hum Tum Radio. She moved to Texas 15 years ago from Lahore and now lives in Houston. Her show, “Mornings with Shazia”, is catered to those tuning in while driving to work or those spending their mornings at home, especially housewives. In her unaccented Urdu, Khan impresses on us the importance of the Urdu language. “When you move to this country, you move far away from your culture, language and traditions,” says Khan. When you turn on the radio and listen to a language from where you were born, and make your children listen to it, it has a huge impact.”

Khan’s view is corroborated by statistics from the international media and marketing research firm Arbitron Inc, which says that the radio-listening audience in the US is 126 million adults aged between 18 and 49 years. In its September 2012 report, Arbitron also said that the audience in the US increased due to young radio listeners in the past year, with adults aged between 18 and 34 and even 12 and 17, tuning in to the radio. “More than 95% of adults aged 25 to 54 with a household income of $75,000 or more and a college degree tune in to radio on a weekly basis. That’s 25.6 million listeners in this demographic,” said Arbitron.

Hum Tum Radio is not the only radio station that caters to South Asians in the Houston area. Its biggest competitor is Sangeet Radio, another South Asian radio station that broadcasts to its audience in Houston not only via the Internet but also through iPhones and iPads.

Saeed Gaddi started Sangeet Radio in May 1997, billing it as the first Pakistani radio station in Houston. But unlike Hum Tum, which targets mostly Pakistani listeners, Sangeet caters to both Pakistani and Indian audiences.

“We have 17 people working for us,” says Gaddi. “Sangeet Radio’s programming caters to not just professionals but also students, women and those who wish to listen to religious programming.”

Sangeet currently has several popular shows, including one geared towards professionals driving to work on the busy Houston highways, a four-hour show dedicated to discussing women’s issues and family problems and a two-hour show for students. The channel also broadcasts the azaan five times a day.

But what truly sets Sangeet apart is its dedicated hour-long political show, which has been launched keeping in mind that the US elections are right around the corner. “From 7 to 8pm, we have a political show to accommodate American politicians, both local as well as congressional candidates, so that they can talk about the community’s issues,” Gaddi explains. “It is important for our audience to know where the candidates stand on the Pakistani and Indian community.”

While the statistics from Arbitron are a testament to the fact that radio is still relevant, Gaddi says that it is hard to determine how many people actually listen to their station on a daily basis since Arbitron only provides statistics for English and Spanish radio stations. However, he believes Sangeet still manages to reach a large enough number of South Asians. “We have 300,000 people in our community and I think a substantial number of them tune in to the station.”

Houston is perhaps one of the few cities in America that has dedicated radio stations which cater to Pakistani and Indian audiences. While Gaddi hopes to expand Sangeet’s reach beyond the airwaves of Houston, he says it is not an easy task since a major part of their revenue comes from advertising and his personal funds.

But whether or not these channels manage to expand their reach, in Houston they have a dedicated fan base. For listeners who yearn to hear Urdu on their radio, these stations offer a unique and valued listening experience. And that is a communal bond the station seems to value above everything else.

“Our community has specific needs and requirements, and they must be analysed by any radio channel. We owe our success in Houston to our ability to understand these requirements,” says Gaddi.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, October 28^th, 2012.

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