Winning a National CR Award reinforces committment

Manmohan Singh from Sanjha Radio Community Radio station
shares his thoughts on winning the national award.

OneWorld: What does it mean to you to win this award?

Answer: This was a very auspicious moment for me as well for my team to receive three awards conferred during the seventh CR Sammelan.

It’s a great honour for me to be given accolades and award for the execution of the most successful and highly important programme this year and for the content sustainability and financial sustainability too.

Being honest, the journey towards the content was not easy; in fact it was very long. Right from the moment when we started  this community radio we were very focused to involve community in every programme,we made our self styled content sustainability and programme participation model which was very effective and what we believe that content sustainability and financial sustainability goes hand in hand, as much popular you are with listeners that much you ought to be with advertisers too.

Transforming the idea to the real output required a good deal of efforts and various challenges came in the way. I was not alone though, I had my colleagues who walked along with me and most importantly our content management committee and listeners who provided unconditional support to Sanjha Radio. Above all, I am thankful to the jury who chose  Sanjha Radio as best in three categories which is now a constant energy boost for me.

OneWorld: How does it feel winning more than one award?

Answer: As I said earlier, financial sustainability depends on content sustainability and content sustainability is totally based on innovation.

These three awards mean to me that we are on the right track to serve the community as per the guidelines of community radio. Yes, I am very happy to receive three awards at a time.

OneWorld:  Did you produce programmes  specifically to apply for awards or did you send your best programmes for awards?

Answer: No, we didn’t make these programmes for award, it’s our culture to celebrate world radio day every year with the theme given by UNESCO, we are doing that from last four years.

‘Radio and Sports’ was very important theme on which we made that series, Sports ki Baat, Sanjha Radio Ke Sath and this was not for the first time, Sanjha Radio always welcome sportsmen and sportswomen to share their views on radio and to inspire the community.

OneWorld: What is your message for CR stations to encourage them to apply for CR awards in future?

Answer: I want to request to all community radio stations to participate in radio awards and to submit maximum entries because I believe this is a platform not only for the acknowledgement of the successful ideas but also for the sharing of ideas. We all can share our programmes and learn from each other.

OneWorld: Anything else you want to add?

Answer: Some of my suggestions are as follow-

  1. Announcement for awards should be more detailed with all the information how to apply for each entry.
  2. Entry submission should be online and offline both.
  3. There should be a contact  person who can reslove all the queries related to applications.