"This study assesses the role and impact of this local radio station network as well as its sustainability prospects, focusing on four pillars of sustainability in particular: Financial sustainability: at a minimum, radio stations need to be able to support their activities, and ideally enjoy some s
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urplus for innovation. Organizational sustainability: radio stations need to have access to a level of professionalism and resources that allow it to produce and present programs of reasonable quality. Political and cultural sustainability: radio stations need to be politically enabled to perform their activities, to do so in safety, and to enjoy the support of the communities within their broadcast area. Audience sustainability: radio stations need to be able to reach a sizeable audience, and to meet this audience’s information needs and expectations. To this end, in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in the Internews/Salam Watandar story as well as those involved in media operations at the central Kabul level were combined with 10 in-depth case studies from the research sample of 30 provincial Internews-established, full Salam Watandar-partner stations. 20 in-depth interviews by phone with the remaining sample stations were added to this." (Executive summary)
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"In 2004-2005, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Transition Initiatives commissioned Altai Consulting to conduct the first comprehensive media evaluation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, looking at the impact of the Afghan media on opinions and behav
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iors three years after the beginning of the country’s reconstruction. The evaluation found, among other things: that Afghans were avid and sophisticated media users and that cultural barriers to media use were less significant than previously expected; that the radio played a predominant role throughout the country; and that media are instrumental in social progress and education. However, since publication of that report1, Afghanistan’s media sector has seen important changes. To inform future assistance from the international community to the Afghan media, it was deemed necessary to assess the current state of the Afghan media – by reflecting a full and accurate audience profile, to determine program preferences, to measure the impact of the Afghan media on local opinions and behaviors and to gauge Afghan expectations in terms of programming and messaging. A large-scale research project was thus planned and conducted from March to August 2010. This research included a deep probe into the media sector and the public’s behaviors and expectations. The methodology used to achieved this included a combination of: literature review; direct observations; key informant interviews with most relevant actors involved in the media sector; 6,648 close-ended interviews in more than 900 towns and villages of 106 districts, covering all 34 provinces of the country; an audience survey on more than 1,500 individuals run daily for a week; about 200 qualitative, open-ended interviews; and 10 community case studies. Such an effort guarantees that results presented here are fairly representative of the Afghan population at large. This document provides a comprehensive synthesis of data collected during the survey. A database of media actors, 16 priority district reports, 10 case study reports, a complete description of the methodology and the original datasets from the main quantitative research and the audience research are publicly available, allowing anyone interested to access more focused information as needed." (Introduction, page 8)
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