Govt suspends issuance of radio license

KATHMANDU, Jan 10: In a bid to regularize the operations and licensing of radio stations, Ministry of Information and Communications has suspended issuance of radio license effective from Wednesday. The ministry has said it will resume the licensing process after the formulation of new parameters that will differentiate the license of the radio categorically into commercial or community. Currently most of the radio operators whether community or commercial run on similar format with similar nature of contents. Likewise, the licensing conditions are also similar irrespective of the category. MoIC has formed a committee to recommend new parameters and standards to differentiate the categories of radio stations so that distribution of new license can be done on the basis of new standards differentiating the category. The ministry is also preparing to limit the number of license on the basis of advertisement market, geographical location and availability of frequency, among others once the new standard is enacted. Anup Nepal, under secretary of MoIC who is also the member of the newly formed committee for categorization of radio, said once the committee submits the report the ministry will issue the license only if the radio fits to be in the particularly category in terms of infrastructure, investment, program content and other factors. Nepal said once the standard is set, existing radio stations will also have to comply with the regulation. “Existing radio stations will also have to change their contents and other features and will have to take one particular category,” he said, adding that the categorization will ease the monitoring process. MoIC has so far issued license to more than 475 stations out of which only 375 are in operation. However, the suspension will not impact 100 radio stations that have already applied for the license. “We will not entertain new applications, but the applications that are already under processing will move ahead,” added Nepal. The committee is expected to submit its report after a month.