Dear editor, Here is a statement for your kind use. Regards, Paragmoni Aditya, working president, Bimal Ghosh, secretary, Bhaskarjyoti Bhuyan, treasurer, Electronic Media Forum Assam Guwahati-781001 EMFA appreciates hiking of government advertisement rates Guwahati, January 7: Electronic Media Forum Assam (EMFA) has appreciated the Assam government for its decision to hike the rates of government sponsored advertisement for the newspapers by 60 per cent over the existing one. However, the EMFA urged the State government to enhance the contributions in the form of advertisements to the Assam based satellite news and entertainment channels too. Mentionable is that a meeting held on January 3 between the representatives from the State government and newspaper owners’ association in presence of State information & public relations minister Basanta Das resulted in the assurance from the government to hike the advertisement rates with effect from January 1, 2014. Earlier, most of the newspaper owners of Assam under the banner of Northeast Newspapers Society adopted protest programmes against the failure of Assam government in hiking its advertisement rates and blacked out government advertisements and State government related news items since December 24. Following the assurance from the State information & public relations minister in the meeting, the newspaper association lifted the ban on government advertisements and news on January 3 last. The EMFA pointed out that the privately owned news channels of Assam, as those are registered as ‘free to air’ channels and receive no money from the subscribers, totally depend on the advertisement revenues for their survival. Hence the forum urged the government to consider an improved rate of advertisements for the news channels also. The EMFA however maintains that the managements of news channels should use the enhanced fund for the overall benefit of the television employees with structured salaries and other allowances. _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
