Community radio survives in places where every other local has closed.
Its costs are low, its equipment lasts twenty years and its audience needs no connection.
That last property matters more than it appears in a country with uneven .
During floods, a radio reaches households that have lost power and signal.
Emergency is the function that governments fund and the one that is used twice a decade.
The daily function is different and is what keeps a station alive between emergencies.
Market prices, school announcements, lost animals and requests for blood donors fill most of the .
None of this is journalism, and all of it builds the audience that journalism later needs.
Language is the second reason these stations .
A station in a minority language is often the only that does, which makes it rather than merely useful.
Funding is the permanent difficulty and has no settled solution anywhere.
Advertising is thin, state support compromises independence and listener are unpredictable.
A mixture of all three, with no single source above a third, has proved the most durable arrangement.
Volunteer labour keeps most stations running and also limits what they can promise.
A that depends on who is free this week cannot build the habit that an audience needs.