KLOK 1170 AM

For the past one year, we have been listening to a new radio station (KLOK 1170 AM) which features primarily desi content (99.9%). Initially, it was quite a novel concept:

- clear signal in the entire bay area
- bollywood songs all the time
- a change from the dull american content (101.3, 106.5, KGO) - yuck

The radio station owners heavily promoted the station, offering people with no experience to come host shows. For a while Ruchi and I were tempted to do our own show too - we even went and got the contract forms etc but later decided not to do it.

Anyway, as time went by, the desi business community took over and we started getting couple of dentists running their dental shows, a few beauty parlor females, and so on. Pretty soon, some dudes from fiji took over a bulk of the time slots. Then came the astrologers and CFA/CPAs. Finally, came the homeopath and Ayurvedic doctors.

The state of affairs now is such that it is painful to the ears to listen to the station. Some of my pet peeves with the presenters/programs on the station:

- Way too many ads. At times it appears that there is less programming and more ads.
- some ads are demeaning to the females e.g. a female will announce that she bought xyz from SJ, abc from Hayward, cde from sunnyvale etc etc. Are they really questioning the audience's intelligence??
- The fiji guys have absolutely no presentation skills. Most of the times, they speak in broken hindi sentences, crack crude jokes and such.
- painful to hear people's dental problems on the radio.
- People call in to the astrologers asking when they will have a kid or get a job and things like that. People get a life, go get some training or education, go work hard.... there are no free lunches and definitely not by wearing stones on your fingers and following the Lal Kitaab.

Now, comes my biggest issue - the alternative healers. The ayurvedic guy is so crude that people call him and ask a simple question and he will point blank ask them to call him at his clinic. It is obvious, he is trying to drum up business (which is fine) but atleast answer the question. If the caller persists, he will get rude and mean. I question, what right this guy has to take over the airwaves and insult people just because he paid a couple of hundred dollars to the radio station. The homeopath is another sad story. I have personal experience with him. I heard him on the radio and was quite impressed. So I setup an appointment with him and saw him. First of all, his office was in the crappiest part of San Jose.... quite literally stinking. The doc is an old guy (which is ok) but he charges an arm and a leg. Not that his medicine did anything for me, on my last visit I was informed that he is going to India for a month. He reduced the dosage of my medicine and charged me double fees because the (same amount of) medicine would last me a month. Goddammit!!!! What a crook.

So, there you have it. I am getting back to suffering my KGO news talk shows.