Community Radio is truly what you can call Mann ka Radio….
A radio which is free from the hustle bustle and cut throat competition. There;s no tension of earning revenue and registering with RAM. Mostly, they are established by big educational giants. Well, I’d call it a good strategy as this adds another feather in their cap and spices up their Mass Communication curriculum.
There are ‘n’ number of community radio stations which are running in the country mostly have a frequency of 90.4. The transmission time differs – in some places it is for two to four hours and in some,it is more than seven to eight hours. The expenses to run a community radio are exceptionally less than commercial ones and you don’t need great manpower either. Three to four people are enough to handle the station and you don’t have to think about the content as active listeners, students, teachers are the regular suppliers. While your Programming Head will complain about the jock for his long link. on community Radio, the talkative RJs are more than welcome. Most of the community Radio employees are retired A.I.R. employees or budding Mass Comm students. Luckily most of the Community Radios have a fixed FPC and websites too. That makes them professional in their approach and neck to neck with other radio formats.
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Nowadays, even government departments and NGOs are thinking of their own community radio stations. This type of Radio is beneficial for those Radio Lovers who still want to hear value based programmes and get knowledgeable content. The motive and objective of community radio are Learning, Information exchange, Society development and Entertainment. I am sure that community Radio has a bright future.
It has the potential to provide employment and rope in a variety to listeners but at the same time it is a hidden rival for commercial radio. Recently government has allowed a five minutes advertising chunk in an hour to these Radio for their Operational expenses. This will give enough support to strengthen their existence but if they start getting advertisements because of their low tariffs, then it will become a problem for commercial radio. These days every commercial radio station is fighting for a small amount of money and this would worsen the current scenario.
If the government clears the guidelines and explicity states the limits for CR stations, they can flourish without intervening on the territory of commercial radio.
Lokesh Gulyani, Radio Programmer, Jaipur
