Lakhs of listeners of the All India Radio’s Ananthapuri FM, available at 101.9 MHz, were in for a rude shock on Friday morning, when their regular Malayalam music shows went missing from the channel, replaced instead with other programming, some of it in Hindi and English. Little did they know that the popular FM channel, with lakhs of listeners, was closed down without any notice, as per directions from the Prasar Bharati.
The programmes from the Thiruvananthapuram-Alappuzha station, the primary channel earlier available on medium wave (MW), have now been shifted to the FM station. A few of the programmes from Ananthapuri FM have been retained, but the morning slots for music, would disappear. Music has been the main draw for listeners to the station, which is played regularly in households, shops and in taxi cabs. Close to 100 empanelled presenters also stand to lose a good part of their earnings as there are not enough slots remaining to fit them in.
Earlier change reversed
The move to shut down the channel comes a year after the Prasar Bharati replaced the popular Malayalam slots in the FM channel with Hindi content and renamed it as Vividh Bharati Malayalam. A good part of the changes had to be reversed after protests from listeners, and after MPs from the State raised the issue in Parliament. After the latest move on Friday, a group of listeners organised a protest in front of the Akashavani station in Thiruvananthapuram, demanding that the FM station be reinstated.
“The changes are part of a decision taken from the central directorate. It is understood that the primary channel, currently on MW, will henceforth be available on the FM channel. Similar changes have been made in cities across the country,” V. Sivakumar, Head of Programmes, told The Hindu.
Two channels in many cities
According to sources in the AIR, the medium wave transmitters have been obsolete and there is a shortage of components. As an easier way out, the Prasar Bharati decided to shift all the medium wave channels to the FM channels. However, most other cities have two FM channels, while cities like Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode have only one. In Chennai, Bengaluru and other cities, the MW channel has been shifted to the FM Rainbow station, while the other FM station has been retained as it is.
In the past decade, several memorandums and requests have gone from Thiruvananthapuram requesting an additional FM transmitter, which would have enabled the launch of another FM channel. It would have saved Ananthapuri FM too from its current plight.
Flaws in decision-making
The centralised decision-making process, without consulting the staff in the regional centres, has also come in for criticism. Recruitment has stalled in the programming section for the past many years. Sources say that the programming staff have not been getting regular promotions leading to those from the technical sections ending up in the decision-making positions. Some of the flawed decisions in programming, without taking regional sentiments into consideration are attributed to these tendencies.
