FM radios operating in Madhes faces crisis

FM radios being operated in Madhes province have faced crises owing to decreasing ad market and other managerial reasons.

According to the Mass Communications Authority Janakpurdham, 19 radios have so far shut their operations in Madhes province. Such trend is likely to continue in the province, leading other radios to the closure in the near future.

Authority Chairperson Shyam Sundar Yadav said 19 radios have so far closed down their operations and around 25 percent radios are not in a situation to air news and programmes due to failure in retaining human resource.

“Ad industry is limited, local governments have not been able to distribute proportional advertisement in lack of procedural guidelines to that end. The situation has caused radio to shut their operations”, he noted.

“The radio operators as well as the governments should come up with concrete plan for commercial management of the Radios from now onward. Otherwise, number of radios facing closure would go up”, Yadav further said.

Radio station manager Santosh Karna said the problem has resulted when the State mechanism provided license of radio without carrying out market situation analysis. “Trade and commerce is in crisis at local level. Frequencies of several radios collided causing low listenership”.