MUMBAI: Aiming to give a boost to community radio stations and create awareness amongst people, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has expanded its Gyan Vani radio network to Madurai regional centre. The university has around 26 such stations in several of its centre across the country.
Commencing on the frequency 105.6 MHz, the station covers a radius of 80km and currently broadcasts recorded programmes related to the curriculum of the university.
The programmes cover a range of topics related to the education system, HR management, communication skills development and English literature amongst others. The station broadcasts from 6-10am in the morning and 6-10pm in the evening. Their aim is to cater to a wide range of audience and reach beyond university.
Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, IGNOU Madurai regional director Dr S Mohanan said, “It is very useful to have a radio station like this, not only for the students but for the general community as well. Through our different programmes we not only cater to the students and create general awareness about issues, but we also try to create different employment opportunities for people.”
While the studio equipments have been set up by the university, the technical requirements are currently being put in place for the live transmission stated to commence within a month or so.
The live transmission will feature special programmes related to topics like Bharatnatyam, psychology, cyber law, organic farming, textile industries, medicine and more. It will feature a more interactive session with experts being brought in and a toll-free number especially for common people to interact with them. Currently the programmes can also be accessed on the university’s website and through a daily newsletter by subscription.
Having commenced with operations, the station is trying to recruit the manpower including a station master and other technical engineers from the city. They have already roped in Saravan Kumar as the additional station master for the network.
“While we are trying to develop programmes based on the community’s interests and the course syllabus, we also have a common recruitment process going on to rope in management staff for the station as all scheduling, broadcasting and more is controlled by us. In other centre’s, they have tied up with various universities who are handling all these procedures but we have not done so,” he stated.
Being a national university based radio network, funding is not a problem for the station as it receives adequate financial help from IGNOU’s headquarters in Delhi and the HRD Ministry as well. It is also receiving DAVP ads as commissioned by I&B Ministry to help project its cause. Apart from that, the station also garners some revenue from the course fees submitted by the students when taking admission.
“Although we currently have different revenue streams, we are spending whatever we earn. We want to develop a good and informative network for the community here and we need the right technology for the same,” Mohanan expressed.