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Community Television for the Poor |
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The Purpose of this DFID funded research was to explore the opportunities presented by digital convergence for locally produced and broadcast integrated television & radio for development education, development communication strategies and local content capture among the poor. Research was susequently conducted in Honduras, South Africa, Tanzania and Ghana.
The starting premises of the research were:-
- Community radio is known to have strong developmental benefits
- There is a strong trend towards television, even among the poor
- There will be new opportunities for audiovisual media presented by digital convergence
These propositions together resulted in the question:
Will there be widespread deployment of such a thing as Community Television and if so, what might be its shape, what might be its essential features, and what role might it play in development?
The research confirms the starting premises. It confirms that community radio can be an agent of change. Using data from household surveys to investigate the information needs of the Africa's rural poor, it confirmed that the poor are migrating to television. This migration is not so much due to wealth but depends more on the availability of electricity.
The report ends with a number of general recommendations, and a specific recommendation that some pilot community television stations should be set up in the immediate future to document the parameters required for a successful innovative community television station.
The summary report is available to read here Community Television For The Poor - Summary 
The full report is available to read on the project website www.tv4d.org
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ICTs 
