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10m population listens Radio Pakistan

KARACHI: Radio Pakistan is the prime source of information and entertainment for nearly 10 million Pakistanis constituting 34 percent of the country's adult population.

This was the view of a spokesman for the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) while commenting on the PBC achievements during 1999.

He said this assessment is based on a Gallup survey carried out to assess the number of Pakistani radio listeners and the type and pattern of radio listening in the country.

The increase in radio listening was mainly attributed to wide ranging reforms and improvement brought about in the programmes and news presentation as well as the working environment both of employees and artists of the PBC. These reforms have set for itself a new vision to squarely meet the challenges posed by the cultural and political invasion through foreign broadcasting stations.

The spokesman said FM-101 has been a success story since its launching in October 1998. This channel set up in three major cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad is aptly described as an entertainment cockpit with youthful presenters, mostly students, in an informal style providing information and entertainment to listeners 18 hours a day.

FM-101 transmissiion has been extended to Hyderabad and Peshawar from Karachi and Islamabad respectively, the spokesman said adding that the channel has attracted Rs 45 million bid for its marketing rights.

He said radio transmission including the World Services and FM-101 were placed on the internet in the audio as were the major news bulletins. Radio Pakistan is this audible to Pakistanis in North America and the regions which do not carry the PBC signals through the short wave transmission.

To counter effectively the adversary's propaganda the external services have been strengthened with Hindi and South Eastern Services being doubled, while a new service was introduced for Assam and North East of India, he said.

A new current affairs wing has also been set up to counter propaganda the Indian electronic media.

"You can appreciate that the Chief Executive recently lauded the matching response given by the Pakistan media during Indian plane hijacking episode," he added.

He said long overdue promotions were implemented to benefit about 1000 PBC employees whereas the artist's fee was increased by 50 percent after a gap of five years.

On the employees welfare front, the PBC Foundation was setup to generate additional revenues. A nation-wide voice paging system using the existing FM transmitters has been planned and a licence has been obtained from the Telecommunication authority.

A high-quality school for boys has been established in collaboration with the OPF Girls College Islamabad in the premises of PBC academy. The school will behind its classes from March this year to provide education to the deserving children of the PBC including those of PTV employees.

The PBC also honoured some of the renowned artists, who earned laurels for this national institution over the years when recently the PBC annual Excellent Awards, Super Star Awards and the lifetime achievemnet awards were handed over to those celebraties at a function held after 17 years.

The PBC has also entered into an agreement with Deutsche Welle (German Radio) for exchange of programmes and similar arrangements are being made with the BBC and VoA for science, sports and entertainment programmes to be broadcast. APP