Govt should allow news on FM: TRAI

It also says an FM radio broadcaster can get more than one channel and the area of the license should be increased from a city to an entire district, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 23, 2008, 01:13:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday recommended that government should allow news on FM radio stations.

It also said that an FM radio broadcaster can get more than one channel and the area of the license should be increased from a city to an entire district.

TRAI also mooted changes in the foreign direct investment policy for FM broadcasters. Those opting for news should be allowed 26 per cent FDI from the present 20 per cent and others up to 49 per cent, it suggested.

For allowing more than one channel to a company, TRAI stipulated that at least three channels, including the All India Radio, in any district should be allocated to different companies. After that, a company already having a channel can bid for an additional channel.

This would mean that the existing ceiling that a company cannot hold more than 15 per cent of total FM radio stations would no longer be valid, TRAI said.

TRAI has allowed FM stations to take news content from AIR, Doordarshan, authorised television channels, authorized news agencies only. "News from any other source is not allowed," TRAI said.

The regulator also allowed outsourcing of content development in a bid to give diversity to FM radio programmes.

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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