[cr-india] can governments run community radio? TRAI consultation

[sajan venniyoor]

It's an open secret that many political parties and state governments are
trying to enter the broadcast space, especially community radio. As this
could have serious conseqences, the Broadcast Regulator (TRAI) has launched
a national debate to define eligibility criteria for those venturing into
broadcasting.

TRAI's Consultation Paper on "Issues relating to entry of certain entitites
into Broadcasting and Distribution activities" (25 Feb '08) is available on
http://www.trai.gov.in/PressReleases_content.asp. Stake-holders should
respond by 25 March 2008.

There have been many media reports on how state governments and local bodies
are making determined efforts to get into 'community' broadcasting through a
variety of subterfuges. At the recent conference of State Information
Ministers (SIMCON XXVI, 19.9.'07), the Karnataka government solemnly stated
that "12 stations are to be started during the next couple of months", while
the Bihar government said that, "In order to help the Community Radio
Stations coming up in big way in the State, 11 schools have applied for the
licence which were requested for early sanction." These state-run schools,
in Patna and Nalanda (the CM's constituency) have already applied for CR
licenses, and the list is available on the I&B Ministry's website.
Mrs. Sheila Dixit has also requested that the Delhi State Govt. be allowed
to launch a Community Radio Station or private FM channel, according to the
TRAI consultation paper. Both the Thane and Nagpur Municipal Corporations
are reported to have applied for "community radio" licenses, as indeed have
several Panchayats.

 Much confusion has resulted from clubbing together all low power,
non-commercial FM channels under the rubric 'Community Radio Stations'.
Whether state governments or political parties should be allowed to own
radio and TV channels may be open to debate, but it would be ridiculous to
have state-run 'community radio stations'. It is bad enough that many
publicly funded bodies have already entered, if not monopolized, the
community radio space. Handing over CR licenses to government and local
bodies would sound the death knell of community radio.

The CR Forum and all of us on this list should strongly resist any such
move.

 Responses to the TRAI Consultation Paper should be sent to Principal
Advisor (Legal), TRAI by March 25, 2008. The comments may be sent by email
to traicable at yahoo.co.in, or by FAX to 011-23237749 / 011-23213294, or by
snail mail to Shri. V K Bhasin, Principal Advisor (Legal), Telecom
Regulatory Authority of India, Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan, Jawahar Lal
Nehru Marg, New Delhi - 110002.

Sajan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/cr-india/attachments/20080226/e1c0bdc1/attachment-0001.html