Late Indivar Sacdeva, Rajiv Saxena and Naveen K. Gupta were some of the broadcasters who were involved with devising the channel's content and presentation style when it was started in September 2001. At that time this channel was just called FM-2.Later on Danish Iqbal and Vijay Deepak Chhiber were Programme Executives of this channel.FM-1 was the previous channel which is now known as FM Rainbow. Anil Baijal, then CEO of Prasar Bharti wanted to call this as FM Classic but FM-2 name became popular by default. The inaugural show was hosted by Sujata Rath, Senior Announcer. Programmes like Gaate Gungunate, Arpan and Dopaher FM were part of the initial repertoire. Another notable feature of the early days was the daily broadcast of Helpline series where various kinds of counselling was provided involving notable experts of different fields. In those days this Channel used to be of 18 hours only. Now it is a 24 hours Channel.
Channels
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FM Gold Delhi
AIR FM Gold Delhi is a radio channel broadcast from AIR Delhi. This channel is dedicated to old Bollywood songs. It also broadcasts Programmes on current affairs from News Service Division of AIR.
FM Rainbow, formerly FM-1, is a metro channel using "Hinglish" which broadcasts a mix of Hindi film music and western pop music. It was initially designed to broadcast only classics of music, drama and literature. Another speciality of that period was the daily Phone-in counselling shows involving educational, psychiatric, legal, marriage, home decor, interior decoration, hobbies like music, painting, photography, dance and many more very innovative subjects. FM Rainbow became very popular among discerning audience within a short time due to its eclectic programming and old Hindi songs. According to recent surveys its morning, evening and late night shows are more popular than any other channel. It is the only channel which has News and Current Affairs in its programming. In Chennai, it broadcasts Tamil songs and occasional English songs with news in English and Tamil operating in 102.3 MHz.In Delhi it operates in Hindi playing older songs with news/special reports commentary and its frequency is 106.40 MHz. It also airs live commentary for Indian sports.
News Bulletins
The then Information and Broadcasting Minister launched a news and entertainment channel called AIR FM-II on 1 September 2001. The channel is on air 24/7. It is a composite blend of information and entertainment with one third of its contents devoted to news and current affairs. Composite news programmes in Hindi and English originating from Delhi are exclusively broadcast every morning, midday and evening for a duration of 30 minutes each. These include ‘Samachar Prabhat’, ’Dopahar Samachar’ in Hindi and ‘Breakfast News’ in English in the morning and ‘Samachar Sandhya’ in Hindi in the evening and 'News at 9' at 9 p.m.. The channel has also some specialized programmes like ‘Market Mantra’ and ‘Sports Scan’. Other news-based programmes mounted on FM Gold include ‘Vaad Samvaad’ and ‘Countrywide’ based on interviews with prominent personalities. It also broadcasts news at every hour. Hourly news headlines are broadcast on FM Gold in Hindi & English alternately, these are 5 min long. Other than this following programmes are broadcast by NSD on FM Gold
