Meri Awaz Suno (Old Doordarshan TV Serial)
Meri Awaz Suno was a milestone for the reality shows in India. For the first time Indian television industry has witnessed such show in which people can participate and show their talent. The show was a joint venture by Doordarshan channel and the ace film maker Yash Chopra and legendary singer Smt. Lata Mangeshkar. It was the first ever singing talent show that was based on pure talents and no public opinion was taken to announce the winner like these days.
Meri Awaz Suno had a number of ace judges who are from the music world and are well known talents of all time. The show was judged by leading music gurus. One of them was Pandit Jasraj and also there was Bhupen Hazarika along with other leading musicians and singers.
The first winners of the show were a guy namely Pradeep Somasundaram and a popular voice of today in Hindi film industry Sunidhi Chauhan. Sunidhi was only 13 years old when she participated in the show and won the crown of the best singing talent. Lata Mangeshkar had called her girl with golden voice. Pradeep, engineer by profession didn’t pursue his career as singer, rather he chose to stick to his engineering career. Sunidhi, we all know has become the biggest voice in Bollywood today.
Show Format
The format of the show was simple compare to today’s reality shows. It was then a tough one as each singer has to sing variety of songs to prove their singing talent.
The show used to start with Annu Kapoor’s song. Then the presenter introduced judges and participants had to introduce themselves as well. The show had three rounds altogether within which the participants had to perform.
In the first round each participant had to come up to the centre stage and sing a song of their choice. It can be ghazal, classical or anything. In the second round the singers had to sing for a movie clip. It was a round similar to play back singing. A movie clip of any famous song was playing while the participants had to sing for the clip that was playing. The scores depend on how the singer could sync his / her singing with the video clip playing.
In the last round the presenter used to give topics to the participants on the spot and they had to sing accordingly. Like if he asked for Ghazal, they had to sing a ghazal within no time or it could be classical, sad song, happy song or anything related to any genre of music.
Each episode had different judges’ panel. Three judges used to come to the show on each episode, no public opinion or voting, SMS or call was there on the show.
Relevance Today
We still have a bunch of reality shows on TV today. But they are much different than Meri Awaz Suno. People who have watched the show probably don’t like the format of the new shows, especially the voting process.
In MAS there were several judges who used to come to the show to judge the participants based on their talents. Now most of the shows have selected judges who remain the same till the end, so there are possibilities of partiality towards the end of any reality show. Moreover today’s shows have public voting process in which the family and friends of a particular participant cast their vote innumerable times so their favourite fellow can win the contest.
Meri Awaz Suno was one such show that had real talents. The judges at that point of time used to judge the participants on the basis of their voice not on the basis of their popularity unlike today. It was not only the first reality show on TV, but also the best among all till date.
| Important Details of the Show | |
| Name of the show | Meri Awaz Suno |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi |
| Subject | Singing Reality Show |
| Banner (production house) | Metavision by Yash Chopra |
| Director | Ratna Rajaiah |
| Creator | |
| Producer | Pamela Chopra, Sanjeev Kohli |
| Story writer | Sarosh Bhabha |
| Dialogues written by | |
| Official site address | |
| Telecast Details | |
| Telecast Date | 1996 |
| Aired on | Doordarshan |
| Telecast episodes | |
| Episode Length | 30 minutes |
| Telecast season no | 1 |
| Cast Details | |
| Character Name | Real Name |
| Presenter | Annu Kapoor |
| Judges | Jatin, Lalit, Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey, Anup Jalota and others |
Other Articles
