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The government
plans to take a lenient view of the private FM radio players breaching
the Dece-mber 29th deadline for starting service because it feels
that the delay has been caused by circumstances beyond the licencees’
control. If the government had decided to implement the licence
conditions to the last technical detail, then the first year’s
licence fee would be forfeited, bank guarantees encashed and the
licence revoked.
“A careful
view of the issue has been taken at the minister’s level and
some more time will be granted,” joint secretary in the I&B
ministry, Rakesh Mohan, said.
The extension
could be as much as 6-9 months for the metro players who face a
more ardous task of finding towers to co-locate their transmitters.
As part of the licence agreement for the metros, the FM licencees
agreed to “be part of a consortium of all licensees in each
centre and install transmission facilities at a single location
and share the transmission resources.”
In the three
metro cities of Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata, the FM players have
signed an agreement with Prasar Bharati for use of transmission
towers of All India Radio (AIR) to co-locate their transmitters
earlier this month. AIR is likely to take that time to get its towers
ready. In Mumbai, AIR towers do not have the capacity to accommodate
the private players and an interim arrangement will have to be worked
out.
In the case
of non-metro cities however, there is no pre-requisite for co-location.
The deadline extension for non-metro cities therefore is likely
to be limited to few weeks.
FM licences
have been given out for 37 stations in 19 cities. The licencees
include Bennett Coleman & Co (12 stations), Ispat group’s
Music Broadcast (6 stations), Living Media (three stations), Vertex
Broa-dcasting of the Dabur group (four stations), Mid-Day (three
stations), Millennium Broadcast (three stations) and Udaya TV (one
station). Private FM players are however not allowed to broadcast
news and current affairs programmes.
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