Building Community Radio in Hospet
By
H.R.Krishnamurthy
What
happens when the programming of a radio station on certain time slots is handed
over to the local community
Developing
viable Community Radio in Hospet, was an experiment that brought to light the
problems and the opportunities associated with implementing community radio.
The aim of the experiment was to re-appropriate the powers of a radio station
to the local community and allow them to plan, produce and present programmes.
Setting up local radio stations
The
first local radio station was commissioned in1984 at Nagercoil. But it was only
during the early 90s that the local radio station movement really took off.
Each local radio station had a power of 3 to 6 kilowatts and catered to a
particular district within a 40 to 60 km radius.
At
this point in time the government thought it fit to issue a set of guidelines
for the functioning of these stations, as they would operate very differently
from conventional radio stations. The guidelines were very progressive and
allowed for a number of innovative experiments. Some of the important
guidelines included that each local radio station should function as a
mouthpiece of the community; that the roles of the broadcaster and the audience
must be flexible; that the audience should be able to come to the radio station
and produce and broadcast programmes; that local radio stations must not
confine their activities to broadcasting but should also organise community events
and activities.
AIR Hospet
AIR
started Community Radio at AIR Hospet, in the Bellary district of Karnataka.
Initially the station was very small with just 40 people. 12 of those recruited
were absolutely new to radio. They had to be trained immediately.
The
station had not been commissioned but test transmission had been started. The
test transmission mainly consisted of film music. The aim of this transmission
was to find out how many people were actually listening to the programme.
People were asked to write down the programmes they listened to on postcards
and to mention the type of radio set they used. The regional station at Dharwad
had been catering to this area of Bellary until then. The announcement that
Hospet had begun test transmission was made from the Dharwad station and people
were asked to write to the Hospet radio station.
Taking stock
The results of this exercise were collated after three months. The small number
of radio sets among the community came as a shock. The total number of FM radio
sets available in the district of 16 lakhs was only 45.
There seemed to be two ways of dealing with this situation. The programming could proceed as planned without worrying about the number of radio sets. Or programming could be done on a low key and the focus shifted to increasing the number of radio sets.