First among the IITs,Kanpur gets its own community radio

With the help of the community radio,the institute authorities aim to provide information regarding agriculture,science,career,medical updates and education for the people. For entertainment of listeners,classical music will be played on the radio station for a short duration.

Set up at a cost of Rs 30 lakh approximately,the radio station will initially have a four-hour airtime.

The IIT-K community radio channel at 90.4 MHZ has been given a two-hour broadcast time in the morning and two hours in the evening. Radio Jockey Amit Tripathi has been hired by the institute to host its programmes and Reema Mittal has been appointed as the in-charge of production of the radio station.

The programmes to be broadcast will be decided by a team of IIT-K students. The community radio station has been set up in the Media Technology Centre of the institute.

Dhande said: “A team of IIT-K students led by Assistant Professor Satyaki Roy have been working on this project for the last two years,and the start of the community radio is a major achievement for us during the ongoing golden jubilee celebrations.”

According to him,the radio station will have a coverage area of 8 to 10 km,which includes certain parts of the city and some villages. “Though it has not yet been decided,we may increase the coverage area in future,” he added.

The trial run of the community radio channel has been successfully completed. Currently,the institute team has a programme storage back-up of 50 hours and in the coming few days,the team members aim to have at least a 100-hour back-up. The institute authorities have yet not taken a final decision on broadcasting advertisements,in the initial phase,no advertisement will be played on the community radio channel.

An IIT-K staff member said that the community radio station will cater to the needs of people belonging to different sections of the society. “Farmers can take tips from the agriculture related programmes,students can benefit from the career counseling programmes,interviews of prominent doctors will help people in taking precautionary measures for various diseases and we will also take up problems related to common people,” he said. “After the broadcast of the inauguration ceremony on Friday morning,we will play an interview of prominent physician Dr Vipin Srivastava in the evening hours,” he added.