Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa at Thursday’s State Radio Awards ceremony at Elphinstone Theatre said that the duty of a radio station was to enrich the language and provide a quality broadcast of programmes.

He pointed out that radio stations in the past had achieved this mission with so much success and it was high time everybody took a lesson from the past.

He said there is fierce competition in the field of radio broadcasting with so many radio channels in service, and the best way to win this competition is to increase the quality of the programmes rather than increase their quantity.

The Prime Minister also said that the Elphinstone and Tower Hall Theatres in Colombo will be made available to artistes at a lower price for their practices in line with the decision taken by the government.

“Our country’s radio broadcasting services is 95 years old and is about to reach 100 years . In the Language of the sports commentators, the radio is about to hit a century,” Prime Minister Rajapaksa said.

He said it was the radio service that created the tradition of music in Sri Lanka. “The radio made the singers and great gadharvas of our nation,” he said.

“Before the advent of television and the computer, the radio was the primary news carrier to the people,” he said.

“Radio had a profound impact on the country’s politics that whenever a new government comes it would change the theme music of the radio news broadcast prior to announcing the government change,” he said.

He remembered how there were attempts to arrest Bandaranaike during the 1971 uprising and take over the radio, since radio is of such strategic importance.

The Prime Minister said, “Most felt that with the advent of television the radio would be shut down. Yet there were no media capable of removing the radio. There was only one radio station there until the 1980’s. Despite the advent of television, almost 50 radio channels have been opened to this date.”