Radio fans rejoice, 97 new FM channels in a fortnight

The I & B Ministry will open bids from 27 companies for the radio stations to be launched in cities in five categories on Dec 29 and Jan 10, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 25, 2007, 02:06:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Over the next fortnight, the country will have 97 new FM radio stations, a big leap for the already booming industry.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry would allow open bids from 27 companies for the FM radio stations to be launched in cities in five categories on December 29 and January 10. While cities like Delhi, B, Mumbaiangalore, Hyderabad, Allahabad and Jamshedpur will have only one channel, the FM magic will make its mark in smaller towns like Bikaner, Trichy, Udaipur, Warangal, Agartala and Gangtok.

The ministry believes the FM bandwidth is already crowded in major cities and therefore, the scope of providing new FM channels to these centers would be difficult. However, in smaller towns the FM radio is expected to be a major success as more and more people are taking to listening to radio programmes.

The auctioning is proving to be a win-win situation for both the government and the private radio stations. During an earlier bidding, the government had earned Rs 11 billion and has also resulted in a continuous flow of revenue. The government expects to have a huge response from the players this time also.

Although there has been a delay of over six months for the auction to take place, industry sources said, that good sense has prevailed at last with the announcement of the new dates. The government had earlier announced an auction date for June, but had later postponed it to November. However, the December-January deadline is expected to stand.

The ministry is also working on the third phase of FM channels, where all cities would get more FM stations. By next year FM radio players can expect the launch of the third phase, an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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