Listening behaviour of farm radio programmes among the farmers of North Bihar
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Date
2016
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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa (Samastipur)
Abstract
Mass media plays a very important role in the dissemination of farm information to the farmers. Among the different mass media, radio has advantage over the other mass media in terms of being handy, portable, easily accessible and cheap. Radio is widely used mass communication medium and has a great potentiality in dissemination of information. Radio caters to a large rural population which has no access to television and where there is no power supply. The farmers are listening agricultural programmes on radio and using this information for improving their crop practices. However, the farmers may have some problems and suggestions about the programmes run by radio which can be useful to media owners, planners, policy makers and extension agencies to plan and implement effective communication strategies to reach the farmers. Keeping all these facts in mind the present investigation entitled, “Listening behaviour of farm radio programmes among the farmers of North Bihar” has been undertaken with following specific objectives.
• To assess the socio-economic and personal characteristics of radio listener farmers.
• To analyze the programme preferences of radio listener farmers with reference to Kheti-Grihasthi and Chaupal.
• To measure the attitude of radio listener farmers towards both the programmes.
• To explore the constraints of non-listening of farm radio programmes and suggests the strategies for its betterment.
The present study was carried out taking two blocks namely Pusa from Samastipur district and Muraul from Muzaffarpur district which are situated in North-East penetration range of Patna Akashvani Kendra. Out of these two blocks, two villages from each block namely Mahmada and Harpur from Pusa Block and Lautan and Iteha from Muraul Block were selected purposively. Fifteen radio listening farmers were taken from each of the selected villages. Thus, a total number of 60 farmers were constituted as the sample for the present study. The investigator collected data by using a pretested structured schedule employing personal interview technique. Thereafter, the data were classified, tabulated, statistically analysed and interpreted in light of the objective of the study, which led to following findings.
It is concluded based on the finding that majority of respondents belonged to middle age groups, literate experienced marginal farmers having farming occupation along with medium level of social participation, mass media exposure, scientific orientation in farming and had favorable attitude towards farm radio programmes.
It was found that maximum number of farmers had medium level (71.66 percent) of listening behaviour and this was followed by low level and high level of listening behavior.
During the study it was observed that there was positive and significant relationship between listening behavior and selected independent variables viz., age, education occupation, social participation, mass media exposure, scientific orientation and attitude while the variables and occupation was found non- significant
The study shown that majority of the radio listening respondents were satisfied with the present timing of the farm broadcast. Maximum percentage of respondents preferred the frequency of farm broadcast daily and duration of 45 minute respectively.
The relative preference of the listening farmers for different programmes on radio revealed that Agricultural programme, News and Pitara were the most preferred programmes, respectively in the study area.
The study indicated that the crop production and farm machinery were the most and least preferred areas respectively towards various subject matter concerned in the field of agriculture.
The interview with progressive farmers was the most preferred mode of presentation whereas straight talk was the least one as revealed by the selected respondents.
Majority of the radio listening farmers were strongly agreed attitude with the statements like “Radio programmes tell us latest technical know-how about improved farm technologies” where as majority of them were strongly disagreed with the statements like “Owning a radio is useless and wastage of money”.
During the study the maximum percentage of farmers (80 per cent) acknowledged their “engagement in domestic and other allied affairs” which was a major time constraint and” Do not like to listen with younger person” was most important social barriers for non-listening of the farm radio programme.
The most important economic constraints was “high rate of battery consumption “while in case of technological constraints, 61.66 percent of agreeing respondent express their views that due to “improper working of radio set” they often missed their programme.
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