Comunicación comercial escrita en inglés

During my visit to KCR, I found the station had 19 full-time paid staff. This included eight permanent administrative staff and eleven relief announcers (six women and five men). The administrative staff included the manager, the financial controller, three labourers, one operating assistant, one clerk and one technical assistant.

The radio manager was appointed by SLBC and he directly reported to SLBC. The manager oversaw administrative works such as hiring staff and volunteers, staff promotion, wage increase, procurement, preparing annual budgetd and general maintenance and repair work. In addition, the manager kept an eye on program production and news gathering. According to the manager, however, he had no authority over the income the radio received. The station’s income and accounts were maintained by a financial controller appointed by SLBC and like the manager, the accountant reported directly to SLBC (S.Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 6, 2007).

The SLBC provided electricity and paid salaries for the full-time staff. The station’s phone bills and maintenance costs were also paid by SLBC. SLBC also maintained the transmitters and transmitting station. For transportation purposes, SLBC provided a mini-van (S.Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 6, 2007).

6.3.3 The staff and the radio

In the early days, the station had no full-time staff except the radio manager. The rest were all community volunteers who helped in programme production, presenting as well as looking after the place. According to the station manager, it was a time when broadcasting in the area, especially through a small community-based radio, was a novelty and hence, there were a lot of local community members who were eager to get involved in the radio in some capacity (S.Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 6, 2007).

At Kothmale Radio, the full-time paid producers are known as Relief Announcers. Relief Announcers research for programmes, produce and edit and eventually present them. Relief Announcers are usually chosen from the volunteers who work at the station. Usually, volunteers are elevated to Relief Announcers after three years’ service. If a volunteer was exceptionally skilled and experienced, there was always the chance that he would eventually become a Relief Announcer (S.Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 6, 2007).

Most of the producers at the station were women and belonged to the Singhalese community, the country’s majority ethnic group. Three women producers told me they were working at the station because they preferred to work closer to home than travel far by bus (personal communication, August 8, 2008). Another woman producer said she preferred KCR because working hours at the station were short and this suited her life as she had to care for the family and could not afford to work longer hours (personal communication, August 8, 2007). Among the women producers, I also met one who said her reason for working at KCR was to keep in touch with radio work until she found a job, probably at a commercial station. She said producers were paid 50 Rupees (about 0.60 New Zealand cents) per hour and they could do a maximum of 150 hours per month which earned about 90 New Zealand Dollars. This

was far less than what a labourer would earn for a day’s work. She said it was very sad to see SLBC not recognising their work (personal communication, August 12, 2007). She also said that lack of money was a reality they all had to face but none would want to talk about it openly or express their dissatisfaction over the pay. This was she said one of the main reasons for the lack of motivation among the full-time producers to do extra work or make more programmes (personal communication, August 12, 2007).

A male producer remarked that they also get limited amounts of overtime each month and this meant that they could not claim money for any extra time they had worked. According to the producer, given the nature of programme making, they could not stop work until the job was completed. Hence, as there was no reason to keep over-working for jobs that were not paid, they tried to do simpler programmes that took less time to finish (personal communication, August 7, 2007). His view was that at KCR, staff were willing to do more work only if they received a good pay. However, although pay mattered, they saw their work as a service to the community rather than just doing a radio job (personal communication, August 7, 2007).

Unlike what I heard from the producers, the station manager had very high regard for his paid staff. According to him, each one of them was gifted, creative, possessed exceptional capabilities and did multi-functional jobs. He acknowledged that the pay was small compared to the work they did but said they were just like him, employees of SLBC and it was for their employer to consider wage decisions. However, he said, in community radio, serving the community mattered more than receiving pay (S. Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 10, 2007). A senior producer working at the station agreed with the manager’s viewpoint but added that in this day and age, money also mattered and it was not easy working especially at a radio station producing programmes that took too long and received little pay. He also said that community service was a responsibility of everyone in the community and not just a matter for the radio staff. According to him, the current manager joined the station in the very early days of the radio and had played a major role in getting full-time jobs for all the current staff. Hence, he was looked at as a father figure by

everyone at the radio station. Given his long-standing service to KCR, his words were never challenged; and as a show of respect, many producers simply worked without complaint. As one of the first employees of KCR, the manager also exerted much personal weight in deciding what changes should be brought to programmes, what should be aired or who should be recruited (personal communication, August 10, 2007).

6.3.4 The radio volunteers

As the radio manager had mentioned to me, in the early days, all the programmes were produced and presented by community volunteers. It was also a time when the local community radio was the only alternative voice on the air other than the government station. Hence, broadcasting being a novelty, the radio had the service of many volunteers who wanted to be a part of it. However, as time passed, the interest in the radio slowly dissipated and working at the radio became regular. The workload too was getting bigger and challenging, needing much time on the road, interviewing. Hence, the volunteer interest to work at the radio gradually faded. Hence, to overcome the challenges, SLBC created full- time jobs and employed all the regular volunteers who were recommended by the KCR manager (S.Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 6, 2007).

At the time of my visit, the station had fourteen volunteers. During my interviews, I learnt that out of those, five had joined the radio station because the manager had invited them.They included a government agricultural officer, a school principal, a temple monk, a lawyer and a shop owner. They joined the radio station at the invitation of the radio manager and it was agreed that they contribute to programmes that related to their field of work (personal communication, August 12, 2007). Among them, for example, the school principal was given the task of producing short programmes on topics such as history, proverbs and wise sayings (personal communication, August 12, 2007). The Buddhist monk provided daily religious hymns (personal communication, August 12, 2007) while the government agricultural officer produced a short programme on tree planting (personal communication, August 12, 2007). One of them browsed the Internet and provided information collected from different websites (personal communication, August 12, 2007). The shop-owner was

given the opportunity to produce a programme because he had a huge collection of very old songs that could not be heard anywhere else. Hence, the arrangement was that he should front up as a programme producer to broadcast his song collection.

Out the five ‘elite’volunteers, two of them, the school principal and the agricultural officer had their pogrammes featured daily. In fact, both of them produced 28 programmes during the two-week period that I monitored and recorded the radio programmes. Each of their programmes was repeated once taking their total to 56 for the two weeks. This meant, for the two-week period I monitored, both of them shared 16.87 % of the station’s total programmes. From my interviews with them, I also found that in their programmes, they did not bring in any local perspectives or provide any opportunity for the local community members to participate in their programmes. They simply narrated information that was compiled from different publications, mostly science, language and history books (G. V. Sooriya and V. Perera,personal communication, August 12, 2007).

According to the radio manager, their interest to participate in the radio and to give their valuable time showed that the radio was truly a community radio station despite it being owned by the government (S. Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 12, 2007). However, I found out that given their professions, and status in the community, they were more or less like ‘elites’ in the community who were assigned to do programmes rather than ordinary members in the community using radio on their own initiative.

In addition to the invited ‘elite’ volunteers, there were nine IT trainees, who were at the government-funded IT centre which was housed in the radio station’s media centre. The IT students worked for the radio at no cost. According to the media centre coordinator, Koasala Keerthirathne, the arrangement was, if they worked free for the radio station, they would be rewarded by getting free access to computers and the Internet (K. Keerthirathne, personal communication, August 13, 2007). Their motivation to work as volunteers was thus connected to free training and open access to IT equipments at the centre at no cost. According to the media centre coordinator, once the students had completed the IT course,

the participants would still get the option to stay with the radio station and continue receiving free access to the Internet and to the computers; again, on condition they continued their free volunteer work for the KCR (K. Keerthirathne, personal communication, August 13, 2007).

Although the station pays no money, the volunteers do get opportunities to earn some money. For example, often volunteers help commercial companies to produce radio commercials or help to produce sponsored programmes. Often the companies involved in these productions pay a good remuneration to the volunteers for these works. The amount paid is entirely a decision of the sponsor as the volunteers simply work free for the radio and the station does not negotiate with the sponsors to give the volunteers any remuneration for their work. One IT volunteer told me he received more money doing radio work than the radio’s full-time paid staff received. This was according to him, a reason that created some sensitivity between the volunteers and some of the full-time staff. The reason was that the full-time paid staff received a small wage and limited overtime and hence, had no huge motivation to do more work. The volunteers, on the other hand, were motivated to do extra hours of work because they received free Internet and free computer time which they used to produce radio commercials and graphic designs for local companies. This meant that their products fetched an income that was better than the salaries of the full-time staff (personal communication, August 13, 2007).

6.3.5 The role of the radio

KCR’s main role was serving the communities by addressing community issues. This being the case, its most important function was to produce community-focused programmes, giving community news and information and maintaining a good rapport with its community. The station aimed to make the community aware that it works for the benefit of the community and that through the radio, the community voices are heard by the concerned government officials so that they are aware of the community concerns (S. Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 6, 2007).

help forge a sense of community among the newly settled villagers. He was of the view that this role had been achieved and therefore, he believed that now there was a new role- that of promoting peace and harmony among the ethnic communities. According to him, unlike the old days when KCR staff were almost all, Singhalese, now there was a more multi-ethnic balance. Now there was a good representation of Tamils and Moslems. In the production side too, he said, there were Tamil and Moslem-focused programmes in addition to Singhalese and more Tamils and Moslems were taking part in radio programmes. This was really an achievement compared to the earlier times when the programmes were aimed mostly at the Singhalese, the region’s majority community (P. Pavithran, personal communication, August 15, 2007).

The same sentiment was shared by Fawzia Hassan, one of the female Tamil producers. In fact she told me that the radio station was a peace maker and in her programmes, she always tried to bring together the views of different ethnic groups and helped the communities understand and appreciate each other. According to her, there was no radio station in Sri Lanka where one could find different ethnic people using the same studios and discussing with each other and sharing common ideas for programmes that would include the interests of different communities (F. Hassan, personal communication, August 15, 2007).

The manager highlighted that it was never the role of KCR to bring political news and political discussions into programmes. Being a radio of all the ethnic groups, he preferred the radio station to be a neutral place, devoid of politics and ethnic misgivings. According to the manager, the community radio should focus on community developmental issues and avoid politics as it was a matter for the mainstream national media. Hence, in his station, even though it was government-owned, reporting politics was abstained from and only the developmental aspects of community were promoted. This being the case, he said, he did not believe that a community radio station necessarily should be non-government owned. In fact, he believed that in developing countries like Sri Lanka or the Maldives, where the communities barely made ends meet, there was no money to spend on running community radio stations and therefore, it was better that the government ran community radio stations

on behalf of the communities. In his view, government funding was a necessity to operate a successful community radio. KCR was, according to him a good example that showed that even government-owned community radio stations could operate without political interference (S. Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 14, 2007).

6.3.6 Keeping in touch with the community

The station’s main strategy to keep in touch with the local community was strengthening local community involvement and expanding community access to radio and enabling them to participate in the programmes. Every day, the radio producers visit neighbouring villages, meet rural communities, share tea at local tea boutiques, discuss the on-going works in the community and enquire from the community members, about their lives. This was part of their daily schedule while on the road.

The station’s most important tool used to reach its community was the E-Tuk Tuk which was a three-wheeler rickshaw. The driver of the three-wheeler was a producer/technician and according to him, he and another producer would travel daily to different villages to meet with villagers and record interviews for radio programmes. At the time of my visit, the E- TUK TUK project was funded by UNESCO and the radio station did not have to buy fuel. This meant KCR was able to save on transport costs through the use of E-TUK TUK. However, the rickshaw had to keep a log of what it did every day and where it went. The log had to be reported back to UNESCO (K. Keerthirathne, personal communication, August 13, 2007).

KCR is open throughout the day for the local community members to come and meet the manager and discuss or suggest programmes of interest at any time. However, the current location was a mountain-top that had many government buildings and permission had to be gained before one could head to the station. To overcome this inconvenience, the KCR from time to time would arrange for community elders, teachers, farmers and local shop owners to visit the station to discuss their interests. There was a similar arrangement with the local

schools to bring the students during the weekends to talk about school work and extra curricular activities (S. Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 14, 2007).

The station also played a major role in celebrating community events. In this regard, during cultural and religious festival times, the station would invite local community members to its premises so the facility could be used for community gatherings. During such times, the visiting community members would bring traditional food, milk, rice and other sweets to share with the radio staff. Local musicians also visit the station simply to participate and join in the festivities. Festivals as well as the radio anniversary day were according to the radio manager, a great opportunity to build confidence and trust with the local community. The manager also said he always encouraged the local community members to come and meet him and discuss or suggest programmes of interest (S. Wijesinghe, personal communication, August 14, 2007).

During my interview with the Listeners’ Club Secretary, D.W. Abeykoon, I also learnt that once every three months, the station organised a meeting of about15 to 20 members from the Listeners’ Club to discuss radio programmes. This meeting provided an opportunity for the listeners to suggest and share ideas for future programmes (D. W. Abeykoon, personal communication, September 9, 2007).

One of the most important ways through which KCR kept in touch with the communities was through its digital story production. One of the volunteers producing digital stories Buddhika Dharshana said unlike the radio programmes, in the digital stories, the voices of the local members who were featured in the stories would be heard for a longer duration and this gave the participating locals a longer time to describe their life in detail. The digital stories were, however, not aired as usual radio programmes, instead, they were used as resources for programme production. Almost all the digital stories were copied on to CDs and sent to government offices, NGOs, charities and funding agencies so that the voices of the community would be heard in their offices (B. Dharshanna, personal communication, August

13, 2007). The discussion on digital story production had been shortened here as I had discussed it in detail in Chapter Eight.

6.3.7 Programme production

Except for six programmes, all the programmes at KCR were produced by its full-time staff. In the earlier days, the programmes were produced on topics and issues that the producers and the manager thought best for the community. A discussion among them and an approval from the manager was all that was needed to make a programme. However, according to the radio manager, now KCR had ‘democratised’ this process by involving its Listeners’ Club.