ALL INDIA RADIO turned 75 last month rather quietly — we didn't see hoardings of the kind the new FM kids on the block are peppering our metros with. There was no big event in the capital city to commemorate the anniversary. And with the perennial cash crunch that every department and every kendra within AIR faces, they would be very surprised if anybody expected them to spend money celebrating.
But that isn't to say that this unfashionable behemoth is fading out. It isn't. It is scrambling to reinvent itself, even as it is seriously hampered for lack of both staff and money. There has been no recruitment for something like 10 years because of both budgetary and cadre constraints, Prasar Bharati's recruitment rules never seem to get formulated. Funds are far from forthcoming: station directors actually have day to day cash flow problems. "Even to make a payment of Rs. 500 you have to think twice," says a station director in the South.
AIR's programming is not exactly setting anything on fire: if you listen to the quality of some of their cricket commentary you want to weep. People with specific specialisations retire (such as in-house accompanists to musicians) and cannot be replaced because of the recruitment freeze. Farm radio is one of AIR's strongest assets, but the agricultural graduates who used to do the programming have been promoted and cannot be replaced. Yet there is overstaffing in other areas.
But with all of that, AIR remains India's foremost rural medium, and that alone makes it firmly relevant in a country whose population is primarily rural. Not just for every votary of public service broadcasting, but also for audiences, and most importantly these days, for the market. For fast moving consumer goods targeting the rural sector, it remains the medium of choice.
This year AIR grossed its highest revenues in a decade at Rs. 97 crores, up from Rs. 73 crores the previous year.
A single window facility now enables someone in Bombay to book advertising on a station in Himachal Pradesh, tariffs are as low as Rs. 800 per station for 10 seconds on Vividh Bharati and Rs. 550 on the primary channel. Of course advertisers take multiple stations, so that adds up. (The total number of stations currently is 210.) Sponsorship rates for programmes have just been rationalised to draw in more takers, with the rates actually being dropped by 60 to 70 per cent, to about a third of what they used to be.
All of this is intended to make AIR competitive again, even as perky private FM stations are popping up in metros, with names like "Radio City", "Red", and "Radio Mirchi", and audacious tariff cards intended to defray the money spent on license fees.
Television is the main competition. Seduced by satellite television, Indians are not as enamoured of radio as they used to be. In the evenings in urban and even rural areas, you watch TV, you do not listen to radio. It is increasingly a morning medium, listened to in the car, at home and by the farmer in his field. The country's rising car population presents a growing audience for radio but private FM's seductive crooners are there, waiting to seduce listeners away from stodgy AIR.
Time for some stock taking then: how much radio listening is actually going on in this country?
AIR's own figures are difficult to make comprehensive sense of. If you walk into its crumbling audience research unit (located adjacent to the much more spruced up premises of Prasar Bharati) you get tomes of studies covering various kendras, giving a host of city by city statistics, but you do not get a single ballpark figure for how many listeners there are, over the years, which would indicate whether it is going up or going
But that isn't to say that this unfashionable behemoth is fading out. It isn't. It is scrambling to reinvent itself, even as it is seriously hampered for lack of both staff and money. There has been no recruitment for something like 10 years because of both budgetary and cadre constraints, Prasar Bharati's recruitment rules never seem to get formulated. Funds are far from forthcoming: station directors actually have day to day cash flow problems. "Even to make a payment of Rs. 500 you have to think twice," says a station director in the South.
AIR's programming is not exactly setting anything on fire: if you listen to the quality of some of their cricket commentary you want to weep. People with specific specialisations retire (such as in-house accompanists to musicians) and cannot be replaced because of the recruitment freeze. Farm radio is one of AIR's strongest assets, but the agricultural graduates who used to do the programming have been promoted and cannot be replaced. Yet there is overstaffing in other areas.
But with all of that, AIR remains India's foremost rural medium, and that alone makes it firmly relevant in a country whose population is primarily rural. Not just for every votary of public service broadcasting, but also for audiences, and most importantly these days, for the market. For fast moving consumer goods targeting the rural sector, it remains the medium of choice.
This year AIR grossed its highest revenues in a decade at Rs. 97 crores, up from Rs. 73 crores the previous year.
A single window facility now enables someone in Bombay to book advertising on a station in Himachal Pradesh, tariffs are as low as Rs. 800 per station for 10 seconds on Vividh Bharati and Rs. 550 on the primary channel. Of course advertisers take multiple stations, so that adds up. (The total number of stations currently is 210.) Sponsorship rates for programmes have just been rationalised to draw in more takers, with the rates actually being dropped by 60 to 70 per cent, to about a third of what they used to be.
All of this is intended to make AIR competitive again, even as perky private FM stations are popping up in metros, with names like "Radio City", "Red", and "Radio Mirchi", and audacious tariff cards intended to defray the money spent on license fees.
Television is the main competition. Seduced by satellite television, Indians are not as enamoured of radio as they used to be. In the evenings in urban and even rural areas, you watch TV, you do not listen to radio. It is increasingly a morning medium, listened to in the car, at home and by the farmer in his field. The country's rising car population presents a growing audience for radio but private FM's seductive crooners are there, waiting to seduce listeners away from stodgy AIR.
Time for some stock taking then: how much radio listening is actually going on in this country?
AIR's own figures are difficult to make comprehensive sense of. If you walk into its crumbling audience research unit (located adjacent to the much more spruced up premises of Prasar Bharati) you get tomes of studies covering various kendras, giving a host of city by city statistics, but you do not get a single ballpark figure for how many listeners there are, over the years, which would indicate whether it is going up or going