India needs College Radio, Talk radio

College radio, run by students, has been a highly popular concept in the west and elsewhere, but hardly found in Indian college/university campuses. This is traditionally broadcast over FM, using low power transmitters. In Indian educational institutions, radio clubs were largely restricted to a bunch of Amateur Radio (ham) enthusiasts – no, I am not calling them geeks- with equipment and a club license to operate this (on shortwave), but nothing of the sort of producing programs which is of interest to the student community.

The BJP Government took the initiative of granting radio licenses to educational institutions and the first Campus station in India was set up by Anna University of Chennai, in Feb 2004. Couple of other universities followed suit, and I would be interested in knowing their current situation.

The absence of a tradition of growing up with a campus radio station would probably be one reason why talk radio is not so popular in India. All India Radio’s programming has a large share of spoken word content, but it is the music programs that have higher listenership.

Aadisht has nearly summed up what is wrong with the Indian FM broadcast scene and how it can be improved.
To be different and to target a particular segment, staying away from the expensive music rights, someone has to start a good FM urban talk radio station in India. To start with, prime time shows should be more localized (city events coverage, issues discussion, interviews etc.) and other time slots can be from sourced programs from the west, becoming an affiliate radio station (Currently Radio Indigo in Bangalore sources programs like Casey’s Top 20) and there are many content rich radio stations out there that are ready to offer programs (which should also make sense to the Indian listeners) for free.

Then again, is it worth starting a niche talk radio station for the heavy license fee* you pay to the government? The revolution in programming in FM spectrum in India can happen only if the government reduces the licensing fee. Else, every other broadcaster would go the safe track of playing popular music, which is happening now.

Also, Indian private broadcasters can look forward to a day when they can broadcast news over FM, which is currently restricted by the government. There is a whole array of international broadcasters broadcasting news to India over Short wave, but the government knows the level of popularity of shortwave radio in India and understands that it can’t be much of a “threat” to the nation. Worldspace digital satellite radio broadcasts the audio streams of the Indian News TV channels NDTV and CNBC India– but nobody in the broadcast ministry seems to care about that! Well, the restriction applies only to “News productions made only for Radio” over “FM”!

*The FM broadcast license fee in India is probably one of the highest in the world. From a Mint article of Oct 2007, it seems that bids (one-time entry fee – for over a period of 10 years) for stations in New Delhi and Mumbai touched Rs 30 crore (close to 750k USD) each.