[cr-india] CR Guidelines on MIB website...

[Vickram Crishna]

More comments (below):
At 2:53 PM +0530 20/01/2003, Subramamaniam Vincent wrote:
>Comments
>~~~~~~~~
>
>4.8 Seems to be dicey, but I suspect a case may be made for current
>affairs with a 'community' scope.

In an offlist discussion with another member here, apropos the 
example of the traffic updates we get here in Bombay on FM, 'civic' 
affairs are clearly allowed, unlike 'current affairs': to quote, a 
traffic jam can be reported, but not the fact that it is the CM 
opening a new flyover who is the cause of it :-)

>
>4.16 Can some do a back of the envelope calculation (Vickram?) for what
>it might cost to preserve 6 months of tapes, making some assumptions
>about kinds of tapes, and 12hr/24 hour telecast schedule? It isn't clear
>if MP3s
>will work, but at 6MB for a 1/2 hour, it works out to approx a 55GB
>requirement for 24hrs/6 months.

Firstly, to mention tapes (which kind of tapes are we talking about 
here anyway? 1 inch? 1/2 inch? 1/4 inch? cassette?) in a rule just 
illustrates the kind of mindless lock-in on technology that 
characterizes our bureaucratic rule-making every time something new 
has to be done.

Yes, MP3s will work (but not if the rule is blindly applied). 
However, before deciding to choose MP3, please remember that it is 
not an open standard, the technology is owned by the Fraunhofer 
Institute in Germany, and they can anytime in the future decide to 
start earning from it. In that case, all your archives will be 
subject to a levy at whatever price they choose. There are other 
compression formats, undoubtedly some of them could be open 
standards, although they may not deliver the same compression ratios. 
I haven't looked.

Also, let's get real, to produce 12 hours of programming a day is an 
enormous effort, simply gigantic, actually (not the mindless 
replaying of someone else's content, like we hear on the LCD - lowest 
common demoninator - music churning out on the airwaves right now). I 
don't think a genuine community radio project can produce anything 
like this amount of content on a daily basis. If it replays some 
content from off the Net (and there is a lot available, we know, much 
of it channeled to us through George Lessard's sterling efforts) then 
I don't see any reason to preserve a second copy, since the Net 
archive is available.

But anyway, if we look at say 1 hour of original programming a day, 
preserved on MP3 format, by my calculation this will range from 
roughly 1.5 MB per 3 min (for rich music) to 1.5 MB per hour for good 
voice. For the latter I am assuming sampling at 44 kHz and 1:10 
compression when converted to MP3, while I just glanced over some of 
my music to estimate the former.

A typical CD holds about 600 MB of data, which means between 1200 min 
(20 hrs, equivalent to 20 days) of music and 400 hours (equivalent to 
400 days) of voice. It costs Rs 14 to Rs 17 for this archive, but 
that is provided you also have budgeted a computer (Rs 35,000) or MP3 
recorder (Rs 20,000 or thereabouts) for the purpose. To the best of 
my knowledge, re-recordable CDs only allow 99 writes, so even if is 
used only for voice, the archival will have to be done on at least 2 
CDs for the six month period. For music, six months can be preserved 
on 9 CDs. So the cost is between Rs 28 and 126, plus the cost of 
owning and maintaining the computer for this purpose.

What purpose? Who is going to review this mountain of data? If we go 
by the hon'ble minister's estimate of 1,000 stations by year end, we 
will have anywhere between 2 and 9 CDs per station per 6 months to 
review, which again is only possible provided they have been properly 
indexed. Somehow I don't think that many communities are going to 
leap up with joy at the effort this will involve, nor are we going to 
find many diligent government officers capable of listening and 
analysing content in any of 100 or more languages from all over the 
country (in 1,000 different dialects!).

btw is the 'big-brother' industry also mandated to preserve 
everything? My experience of television broadcast studios (admittedly 
a little - 5 years - out of date now) tells me they neither have the 
cash nor the know-how to index and store all the garbage that pours 
down through the skies endlessly. But can you see the hon'ble 
minister or her hardworking bureaucrats shutting them down anytime?

I suspect the h-wbs just copied some old unworkable guidelines for 
this new initiative, without giving it much thought (and certainly no 
discussion). After all, it is only one year since the dear lady first 
enthusiastically went vocal about community radio, and that is not 
nearly enough time to apply genuine thought to anything.

Especially not enough to understand how giving the facility to 
residential educational institutions (and singling out IITs and IIMs 
for the purpose) can possibly constitute an advance for the common 
Indian. But then we have had this elitist/commons debate before, 
haven't we?

>
>Also, does anyone have the contact info (functional email address) for
>the MIB bureaucrats who handle this area? I can't seem to find it on
>their website and the webform to submit a query is not working!

Tsk tsk.. :-) maybe they are too busy playing the B role instead of 
the I. The latter requires thought.
-- 
Vickram