In order to make Community Radio Stations sustainable it is important to encourage the avenues of advertising. Community Media expert Dr R Sreedher argues that the rate and the duration of advertising should be increased. Excerpts from his interview are below:
The next step in the Community Radio movement is that we should introduce value added services which are banned, like mobile streaming, internet streaming, data and all sorts of things. There is a growing discrimination between commercial radio and Community Radio as far as advertising is concerned. Community Radio Stations are allowed only 5 minutes per hour where as commercial radio is allowed 12 minutes per hour which is a vast difference.

They may argue that we are getting licenses free of cost or at nominal license fee but anyway for Community Radio Stations to be sustainable either the rate should increase or the duration of advertisements should increase to at least 8 minutes per hour which is still not at par with the commercial radio.

I have found that in the last four to five years there is NGOisation of Community Radio and this has not given any fruits. Even though out of the 450 odd licenses issued 250 are for NGOs, but still it could be argued that there are many NGOs who have taken licenses and have not started the radio stations.

If you want the Community Radio movement to move ahead we should also equally give licences to the agricultural institutions which are the least license holders today, and also licenses should be granted to more educational institutions. And at last while the licensing policy is reviewed we may think of free or open licenses like instead of 50 watt transmitters we can have 10 or 15 watt transmitters which would be free from the Ministry of Telecom.

R Sreedher is a Media expert and Community Radio Practitioner