All India Radio future hazy?

                                                                                    S. Harpal Singh

                                                      Courtesy: www.thehindu.com

AIR Adilabad commissioned in 1986

Earns Rs. 50,000 last year through advertisements

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Supporting talent: AIR Adilabad station provides a platform for well known personalities like writer Madipalli Bhadraiah.

ADILABAD: The future of All India Radio looks hazy given the efforts being made to cut the budget of the National Public Service Broadcaster by half. If this move becomes a reality, individual AIR stations will be required to generate 50 per cent of respective budget, a seemingly difficult task.

Smaller broadcast entities like AIR Adilabad, Kothagudem (Khammam) and Markapuram (Ongole) that are located in rural areas will be the worst hit by the move. Due to their location in economically backward areas, these stations can hardly be expected to generate revenue through advertisements which may raise a question mark on their very existence.

The proposal to cut the budget has become a cause of worry to the National Federation of AIR and DD Employees (NFADE) and the Programme Staff Association (PSA). The degree of difficulty in generating revenue was discussed at the PSA National Executive meeting at New Delhi on May 14.

“When stations like Hyderabad and Vijayawada are not equal to the task how can it be expected of smaller stations,” opines V. Gopichand, AP State secretary of the Programme Staff Association, about the degree of difficulty in revenue generation. He says the move will be opposed by all Associations within the Broadcast giant once the issue of fresh recruitment settles down.

AIR Adilabad station was commissioned in 1986 as a facilitator for providing opportunity to tribals and others like rural artistes to exhibit their talent. It is rated very highly in terms of meeting its objective but it quite poor in generating revenue.
It has earned only Rs. 50,000 through advertisements last year while its budget is of the size of about Rs. 80 lakh per year.

Expecting Rs. 40 lakh to be generated in a poor and backward place like Adilabad is like questing for the impossible.

The relevance of AIR stations like Adilabad rests not only on the service it provides to rural talent. It also serves to bridge the gap between farmers and agriculture scientists through its highly popular programme Kisan Vani

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           All India Radio has to perform public service broadcasting, something the private radio stations do not do. According to I&B ministry, of the 12 lakh hour of annual programming generated by the AIR, around 60% is meant for public service broadcasting whereas the private radio operators are generating their content, mostly contemporary Bollywood music, for maximising revenues.

         In this scenario too, AIR has been generating steady average annual revenue of around Rs 220 crore over the last four years. Also, the FM stations of AIR had the highest number of listeners in metros compared to private stations,  the government had said in the Lok Sabha last year. According to the data provided by the I&B ministry for 2008-09, the average listenership of AIR’s Rainbow and Gold channel in the country stood at 49.5% and 29.55%, respectively.. The data gathered was according to a listener’s survey conducted by the I&B ministry’s Audience Research Unit during 2008-09 across 18 metros in the country.

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