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Increasing Local and Regional Content

Brijeshwar Singh, Director General, All India Radio

What are the most popular items of local and regional content?

Based upon Prasar Bharati’s experience these include:

• Local and Regional News

• Local and Regional Music, in particular, folk music and folk tales, which entails historical and mythological stories.

• Local market information, particularly local market information relevant to farmers.

• Local sports events coverage.


Consequently in organizing regional and local content, a certain structure is necessary.

• Local and Regional News – this requires a team of Part-time News Correspondents with the capability to feed audio and video content. Usually for past considerations, Prasar Bharati manages TV Correspondents in major provincial headquarters but has Radio Correspondents in district headquarters. There are also questions of technology. TV Video bytes require satellite access. Radio bytes can be done through Mobile Codecs even on telephone lines though ISDN lines are preferred for sustained coverage like sports events. Without a framework of local and regional news, local and regional coverage never becomes popular. Repeated surveys have shown that in India local and regional news by far outshines National news in popularity excepting events in the national capital.

• Local and Regional folk music and in particular tales which tell past history of rare and mythological tales are an important part of local and community level identities. It is through self identification with a local identity that people find it easier to also understand the national identity. This requires programmers with understanding of folk music.

• Recordings of folk music artists, preserving old music slots and preservation of texts of local ballads of a historical nature are therefore an essential part of tradition.

• The primary role of a broadcaster is to preserve early tradition and recording ballads in a definitive way is part of the job.

Local Market Information

• Each region has a series of weekly or daily markets. This acts as a bond between local economy and larger national and global economy. Many markets stay at very high or very low prices and can be exploitative.

• Radio and TV give local viewers and listerners an idea of present context of market prices and this helps people in not being exploited.

• Market rates are therefore very important to local and regional viewers.

• However, comprehensive coverage of market rates is very difficult to achieve and Radio and Television have had repeated complaints that our markets are not in fact covered.

• Media organizations find it very difficult to visit weekly markets and ascertain prevailing rates. This is very labour intensive. Perhaps we need NGO partnerships to help us in this.

• In addition, there are important annual fairs, which take place once in a year and coverage of these fairs and markets is a very important part in increasing local and regional content. These fairs and exhibitions can be religious or for historical reasons. They provide entertainment in addition to commercial opportunities. They also provide special dishes and special food items. They reinforce the local sense of identity.

• Coverage of local religious and social festivals, particular to specific region or tradition is extremely important. Every region has specific local holidays which are not observed on wider scale. Media organizations have to cover this to strengthen the sense of local identity.

Local Sports

• Each region has some particular favorite sport which may be very localized in its popularity. These include inter-village competitions, competitions in the field of strength such as climbing up and down a particular mountain peak, lifting of particularly heavy stone, bullock-cart race, bull wrestling, free-style wrestling or specific games which local regions have such as Horse-back Polo in Manipur or Pole-based Gymnastics in Mumbai region.

• Popularizing and preserving local sporting traditions is an important part of local and regional content.

• Local news correspondents are usually good at local sports coverage.

Community Radio

• Community Radio is affordable but the programming is difficult to sustain in a market, like India, where the National Broadcaster is already present.

• Community Radio’s work is based in areas not covered by the national broadcaster.

• The great increase in community radio stations can displace National broadcaster and commercial broadcasters very quickly. Governments have to pay attention to the need to lead community radio station work within a framework of national level coverage as well.

• Community Radio can fulfill local information needs. Typically, it is not effective at playing role in preserving local music, local traditions or providing sports events.

• National level broadcasters therefore must utilize these remaining opportunities for local community coverage.

Local Radio in India

• Radio was originally envisioned as a medium with the power of bringing the information of far way happenings instantaneously to people in any area in the world.

• This role of radio still continues but, with the evolution, proliferation and explosion of various media tools, it has now been transformed.

• Radio is now increasingly being seen as a personalised and intimate friend catering to people from various communities.

• This flows from the fact that the technology employed for radio broadcasts is still comparatively simpler and cheaper and, therefore, affordable for even disadvantaged sections of the society.

• In India, we are now witnessing a robust rate of economic growth and are taking our due place in the global economy.

• However, large proportions of our population still remain socio-economically disadvantaged and, thus, are deprived of the boons of the booming economy. They are best reached by radio.

• Various sections of people in India need to be constantly informed about the schemes and policies implemented by various government and other agencies for their benefit.

• They also need a platform to express their needs and aspirations and also comment about the actual effectiveness of these plans and policies.

• India is a wonderful mosaic of various cultural and socio-economic streams with many religions, languages and dialects as well as life-styles.

• Unity in diversity is the defining characteristic of this great country.

• India is known for its ancient civilisation but is now one of the ‘youngest countries’ in the world with about 40% of its population in the age bracket of 15 to 35 years.

• These young people are energetic, full of vigour and expecting newer modes and styles of media attention.

• All India Radio is the premier public service broadcaster in India.

• It has a large network of medium and short wave as well as FM mode of transmission covering almost 99.17% of the population and 99.12% of the area.

• It has 225 broadcasting stations and 361 transmitters located all over the country.

• To fulfill its mandate, AIR has developed a three-tier system of operations, i.e. national, regional and local.

• All stations of AIR relay national news bulletins and some other programmes in various formats dealing with national issues and also those of international import with relevance to India.

• These programmes are mostly originated from the national capital New Delhi with inputs from other stations as and when needed.

• There are 115 regional stations spread over different states of the country.

• These serve the people in their broadcast zone by mounting programmes in different formats and in concerned languages and dialects to inform, educate and entertain, so that people are enriched as well as empowered.

• AIR also has 82 local stations located in different districts with focussed programming with a distinct localised flavour for the inhabitants.

• AIR has FM Rainbow and FM Gold channels catering to the tastes of the people mostly in metro cities.

• All these different programming streams merge to create a radio broadcasting universe, which is not only responsive to different socio-economic and cultural needs of Indian people but also binds them together and contributes in nurturing national ethos.

• In the changing media scenario, more attention is being paid to further diversify AIR’s programming and transmission network.