City’s first campus community radio launched

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 1

The PG Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Doaba College today launched Jalandhar’s first Campus Community Radio - Radio Raabta at 90.8 Mhz.

Launching it, Principal Dr Naresh Kumar Dhiman said, “The radio will cover a radius of 15 km, reaching the urban as well rural regions of Jalandhar district. It will relay programmes related to various communities, including housewives, labourers, farmers, students etc for two hours from 10 am to 12 noon. It has been established under the proposal of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. We will be sending our recordings to them for three months after which we are expecting a funding of Rs 7.5 lakh. By then, we also intend to broadcast it online.”

Dr Simran Sidhu, head, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, said the department had established a separate radio studio, transmission room along with a tower with height of 30m under the guidance of Community Radio Facilitation Centre for the smooth functioning and transmission of the radio station. She further said that through this community radio, the students of the journalism department will get hands-on training in script writing, recording, giving voice-overs, audio editing and transmission etc.

Dr Sidhu said with a view to determining awareness regarding community radio among people of rural and urban population of Jalandhar district, the department had recently conducted a survey. “Surprisingly, only 3 per cent of the respondents knew about community radio. Responding to the queries in the questionnaire, 73 per cent of the urban population and 62 per cent of the rural population strongly believed that community radio will definitely contribute to the development of society. A majority of the female respondents wished to participate in the programmes related to women’s rights, drug de-addiction, politics and education. The respondents also wanted government policies and schemes to be discussed in detail on community radio,” she said.

Dr Sidhu said Community Radio Raabta was in fact of the people, for the people and by the people and would be run with the joint efforts of the community comprising people from all the walks of like. “Other than weather reports, there will be no news on the radio.

Our programmes will strongly focus on health, sports, education, spiritual, public awareness, culture and development issues. Students from all schools and colleges can come to us and get their poems, songs and stories recorded with us for relay.”

The college faculty said, “All these segments will include the songs before 80s of all genres, including spiritual and patriotic. A special schedule has been designed, beginning the day with spiritual songs in ‘Simar Simar Sukh Pao’, followed by health awareness programme, ‘Tandrust Sehat’. This channel will also give voice not only to intellectuals but also to labourers, farmers through programmes ‘Main Mazdoor Bolda Haan’ and ‘Khushaal Kisaan’. To inculcate and to transmit cultural and moral values from one generation to the next, it will be done through programmes ‘Maavan te Dhiaan’and ‘Umar dian tarkaalan’ . After the period of three months, the community radio will go live through phone-in programmes and discussions. At the same time student community, agriculturists, NGOs will be catered through field programmes.”