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NEW DELHI: Community Radio need not be a drab socially committed affair, nor a financial burden, but can be as attractive in content and a source of livelihood, as a discussion on the Bombay University Community Radio at the E-India 2007 here today showed.
Pankaj Athawale, who is coordinating the University`s programme, said he has drawn up a revenue model based on the five minute per hour advertising time allowed by the government for CRSs, and says he has sold off all his advertising time.
“The target audience is overlapping,” he said, “which means that at any time, two lakh students as well as others living in the range of the signals are hooked on to the radio, and from stationers to computer suppliers, tea stall owners and dabbawallahs , everyone is our client because we have priced it right.”
Athawale and Raman Nanda, a senior journalist who has set up some 30-odd community radio stations (CRS) across Afghanistan, stressed that the price fixed by government for a 10-second segment is Rs 300, but they would offer it at Rs 100 and draw the volumes.
Athawale was speaking at the session on “Campus Community Radio” during which he firmly argued that community radio is not and should not be regarded as a public service broadcast system, and should have its distinct identity in the face of competition from the pubcaster as well as private FM channels.
“The community radio suffers from an identity crisis from the time of its birth,” Athawale said, explaining that its role is never clearly understood.
He said that at the BU station, music and language training programmes as well as those on computer sciences or AIDS or public information campaigns on traffic rules or consumer protection would be played.
“We need to do it differently. We have to see what the private channels are doing and stay away from drab monotonous programming, as we will do AIDS awareness programme where two mythological characters turn the topic into an audio drama, which makes it appealing,” he said.
