Community radio for development in South Asia: A sustainability study

Community radio (CR) is a participatory medium and a subset of radio broadcasting. It is an inexpensive and popular way for disseminating content (information, news, entertainment, etc.) CR is designed to increase availability of localized information, media access and empowerment, and even market based growth and societal resource distribution for the community. We examine the sustainability of CR as a tool towards achieving the overall development in the South Asian region. A cross-country comparison of CR in areas including people's participation, regulatory scenarios, human resource development, technology usage trends, financial practices etc. shows a wide variety of CR applications and challenges. An indepth analysis of financial data and practices of several Nepalese CR stations (rural, urban, and semi-urban) alongside regulatory and anecdotal references from India and Bangladesh shows potential viability through advertising and other mechanisms. Even with an advertisement cap of 5 minutes per hour, every station shows the potential of achieving financial sustainability by selling a fraction of the allotted ad time (7%-46%). Our model shows that the monthly operating expenditure of types of stations turns out to be more significant than the annualized capital expenditure. In our analysis (and borne out in the real world), of the three considered stations, the semi-urban station has the highest cost per listener. Stochastic cost modeling of real world CR data show the trend of increased cost for content development is a trade-off for expanding the listener base and transmission time. We conclude with a proposed set of policy and operating recommendations to enable CR to play a significant role in overall South Asian development.