I just got back from freed.in and met Sajan Venniyoor, one of the stalwarts of community radio in India for the first time (though we’ve communicated by phone/email before). During his session he talked about the four areas that make community radio totally contrary to the open source/open forum it’s purported to be
1. Content restrictions: no news on radio. And while we’re at it: no definition of ‘news’, thank you very much. Which means we can arbitrarily make up a definition to include whatever we don’t like, no?
2. technology restrictions - a transmitter costs Rs. 1.5 - 2 lakhs and is only made by two govt. approved companies (can we say “antitrust,” anyone?)
3. spectrum restrictions (uh, excuse me while I snort and roll my eyes at this utter tripe)
4. copyright and royalties (case in point: royalties to ASCAP & BMI combined in the U.S. cost a Low Power FM station, equivalent to a community radio station here, Rs. 5.73 per hour of music. In India, PPL costs Rs. 480.00 per hour of music. uh… hello?)

It was interesting and exasperating to watch someone from All India Radio try to explain away how the govt. tech monopoly would magically crumble AFTER the demand of 1,000+ established CR stations forced it to (like with mobile phones). Later, though, we had a very interesting discussion about shared bandwidth, shared frequencies, defining a community by area, and regulatory bodies. But more on that in another post this week. Stay tuned…  };-) -c*

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm and is filed under the state of radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.