By Devina Samaroo
After waiting more than 20 years for a license to operate a radio station, prominent broadcaster, CN Sharma was Friday finally granted permission and given a frequency on 105.1fm.
Sharma is among five other entities to be granted radio licenses to operate in Guyana for the first time.
Sharma and his wife, Savitri were elated to have been granted their radio licenses after waiting for decades for their application to be approved by the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA).
“After twenty years, now I get my license…I should thank Granger, President Granger for that,” Sharma expressed to reporters at a simple handing over ceremony which was hosted at the GNBA Headquarters on Lamaha Street, Georgetown on Friday, January 5, 2018.
The couple owns and operates the television station, CNS Channel 6 – one of the earliest in the country. The broadcasters are hoping to have their radio station up and running in three months.
However, they are a bit disappointed that they were not given enough time to have systems in place to commence radio broadcasting right away.
“From now we have to go out and source everything and put together a new studio and we don’t know how long that is going to take to set up…it means that we have paid a license for a whole year and we would not be receiving revenues for the entire of this year,” Mrs Sharma stated.
The Kaieteur News media outlet also received their radio license today after waiting for several years. The company’s Editor-in-Chief, Adam Harris was on hand to collect the document.
“This application was in since about 2000. Now that we have a frequency, we are now going to buy the transmitters, early next week we are going to go down to Florida to acquire the transmitters…we could be on air within a month,” Harris said.
The other entities that received licenses are Two Brothers Corporation, Pinnacle Communications, Brutal Group Inc., and Blackman and Sons.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Broadcasting Authority, Leslie Sobers explained that the licenses are valid for one year but the entity is looking to have the validity period extended.
“We will be examining moving away from these annual licensing. We are contemplating a longer period of licensing, maybe two or three years because the law allows us to grant as many as ten years on a single license,” Sobers said.
Moreover, the Chairman explained that in processing future applications, the entity will have to pay careful attention to how it distributes frequencies in the primary zone as spaces are extremely limited.
