New Delhi: After a year-long deliberation, public broadcaster Prasar Bharti has finally decided to shut down the National Channel of All India Radio (AIR) in order to “rationalise” and cut operational costs.
As per an order to that effect issued on behalf of the director general of AIR on January 3, Prasar Bharti communicated the decision to the AIR directorate on December 24. The archival material maintained by the National Channel, operating from Todapur in West Delhi, would be sent to the central archives of the AIR in Delhi “for digitization – wherever necessary – and preservation for posterity”.
A decision was also taken to disband all the five Regional Academies of Broadcasting and Multi-media (RABM) situated in Thiruvananthapuram, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Hyderabad “with immediate effect”.
Sources in Prasar Bharti said that a decision was being awaited on the closure of the National Channel “for about a year”. “Most senior officials working for the National Channel have retired. It has very little audience connect now, just being run for the sake of it.”
A member of the public broadcaster’s digitisation programme told The Wire, “This is actually a part of the digitisation process of AIR. We are modernising channels which have strong listener base, and making them available in our mobile app. They have far better reach.”
He said,” “The major reason behind the decision to shut down the National Channel is their weak transmitters. The one in Nagpur is only about one megawatt, and can’t be heard well by a large number of listeners. Such technology is not enough in the age of digital radio.”
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On being asked why better transmitters were not used, he said, “The senior management of Prasar Bharti felt there was no point in investing funds in a channel which doesn’t have a strong listener base. Anyway, the endeavour now is also to outsource some of the operations of AIR. For instance, the AIR website is managed by private players.”
The Facebook page of the National Channel has been ineffective since July 2013.
There was a time when the National Channel would be the first to transmit the president’s address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day. “Now it being transmitted through all the channels of AIR, including the FM channels,” he said.
It was also the only radio channel that would do news broadcasts between 6:50 pm and 6:12 a.m. every day. In the age of 24-hour TV news, a senior AIR official engaged with the National Channel some years ago said, “That exclusivity has also gone”.
As per the January 3 order, the employees working out of “Todapur and Nagpur, etc.”, so also at the institutes, would be “posted as per the requirement of the organization”. A senior functionary at AIR said, “Nobody will be retrenched.”