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NEW
DELHI: Eleven All India Radio Stations and 164 private FM
radio stations are expected to go on air by the end of the
year.
Meanwhile,
Information and Broadcasting ministry sources said pre-qualification
bids had been invited from private companies for 78 vacant
FM channels of class ‘C’ and ‘D’ cities
through a notification on 8 June.
After
the new policy of expansion of FM broadcasting through private
operators had been notified on 13 July 2005, 337 channels
in 91 cities including 217 channels of class-C and class-D
cities were put on bid. Out of these, agreements were signed
with successful bidders for 139 channels in 57 cities.
At
present, a total of 263 FM channels include 161 of All India
Radio and 102 privately owned channels are operational. These
include 21 operationalised under the Phase-1 scheme.
Of
the private FM radio channels expected to come up by the end
of the year, 27 are in Maharashtra; 17 in Kerala; 14 in Tamil
Nadu; 12 in Rajasthan; 10 each in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh;
nine each in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh; eight each
in Karnataka and West Bengal; seven each in Punjab and Jharkhand;
six in Chattisgarh; three each in Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim
and Puducherry; two each in Orissa, Meghalaya and Assam; and
one each in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Tripura, Bihar and
Daman and Diu.
The
All India Radio stations are coming up in eight states by
the end of the year. Of these, three will come up Jammu and
Kashmir (Diskit, Nyoma and Padum), and two in Orissa (Rairangpur
and Soro). The others are Macherla (Andhra Pradesh), Oras
(Maharashtra), Churachandpur (Manipur), Dungarpur (Rajasthan),
Dharmapuri (Tamil Nadu), and Dharmanagar (Tripura).
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