Minister’s vow in vain, Prasar Bharati to downgrade 5 stations in state

“There are six primary stations in Tamil Nadu, including the one in Puducherry and Prasar Bharati is planning to convert five of the primary channels into relay channels except Chennai. Chennai will remain as the primary channel and all other relay stations will be made to play the programmes given by Chennai station due to which hundreds of temporary workers in other primary channels are at risk of losing their jobs,” an employee attached to Tiruchy All India Radio toldDT Next, on request of anonymity.

All India Radio, under Prasar Bharati, has seven primary channels in Tamil Nadu located in Chennai, Tiruchy, Madurai, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Puducherry. Every primary station has 12 hours of its own programmes aimed at local culture, agriculture, fishing and folkarts and so on.

However, recently, the Centre decided to have one primary channel per state and to convert the rest into relay channels. In technical terms, it is referred to as ‘one state one primary channel’ scheme. When the scheme was announced there was uproar following which Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting L Murugan assured that the scheme will not be implemented. However, the Prasar Bharati has decided to implement the scheme from Pongal.

An official in the rank of Additional Director General held a meeting with all the Head of Programs (HOPs) on Friday and informed them the intentions of Prasar Bharati to convert primary ones into relay stations and based on the meeting HOPs have informed the employees to follow fixed point chart from Pongal.

“According to the information, the relay channels will be given only 5 hours per week for broadcasting native programmes which will result in decreased patronage. Fishermen and farmers who are the major beneficiaries of the local radio channels will be the one to be affected and so Prasar Bharati should drop the plan,” said another employee attached to Tirunelveli AIR.

Minister L Murugan was not available to comment on this issue.