Private FM radio channels left out of economic package send SOS message to Centre

The personal FM Radio sector unnoticed of the Centre’s Rs 20 lakh crore financial bundle has despatched an SOS message to Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javdekar to remind the federal government concerning the disaster being confronted by the sector.

The Association of Radio Operators for India, an business physique of personal FM channels, advised the federal government that the sector had been wanting on the authorities with hope to assist the sector survive.

“We have watched closely with hope the economic packages announced by the Finance Minister over the past week. However, we are deeply pained to note that none of these measures has any effect whatsoever on the private FM Radio sector,” AROI president Anurradha Prasad stated in a letter to the Union I&B minister on Tuesday.

In her letter, Anurradha Prasad stated the one measure that would have some impact on smaller teams working FM radio would have been additional credit score facility for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME).

“Only 31 out of 371 stations are MSME, while 340 do not fall into the MSME segment,” she stated.

But these 31 radio stations additionally can’t not avail the profit since they don’t have any income forecasts to repay the loans given their heavy dependence on authorities promoting that has dried up during the last one yr.

The AROI letter underlined {that a} Rs 300 crore reduction bundle “needed to keep private FM radio channels alive” can be in nationwide curiosity on condition that these radio corporations would, over the following 12 years or so, find yourself paying Rs 15,000 crore to the federal government via migration, licence charges, leases, GST and so forth.

In its earlier requests to the federal government, the affiliation had pointed that the radio business was going via a tricky section with promoting income shrinking over the previous yr with a de-growth of 20%. This income stream had lowered additional by over 80 per cent after India moved into the Covid-19 induced lockdown in March this yr.

It had then requested a four-point help bundle that included a one-year waiver on licence charges and fees, restoration of presidency promoting on radio and clearing the long-pending funds from the federal government’s Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity.