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Nepal’s media environment has become diverse over the years. Thousands of newspapers are published from around the country. Hundreds of radio stations and news portals, and several dozen television stations are operational. The growth has been so fast, and with the pace continuing, it is difficult to get a clear and accurate picture of the country’s mediascape at a given time. Moreover, timely and authentic data on various forms of media channels and platforms remain limited.

Here at Media Foundation Nepal (MFN), we have been working on integrating the data available from various authentic sources, and visualizing them in the form of an interactive map for a simple, easy, holistic view. (a large view । even larger view)

The Nepal Interactive Media Map is, thus, a one-page view of the country’s mediascape. This is based on data sources from Press Council Nepal and the Ministry of Information and Communications. Included here are registered newspapers, published and unpublished, and online news sites that had applied for registration, operational FM radio stations, which had obtained the government licenses, and license-holding TV channels across the country.

The top layer of the map has information about 3,712 newspapers and periodicals organized in colors showing five regions of Nepal. In each region, the district-level icon displays a hover card with data on regular and irregular dailies, biweeklies, weeklies and fortnightlies as well as the number of registered but unpublished papers. A PDF file of the data is available for download at the Press Council Nepal website.

On the map, shown in cards standing on star symbols, you will find more than 100 online outlets with their email contact addresses.

The map also contains information on some 300 FM call signs or operating organizations. Data on FM stations were extracted from a PDF list in Nepali, which showed their licensed and operational status. This forms a major layer of the map below the two for newspapers and online outlets. Only about half of the radio stations listed at the website of the Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC) have been shown because it is taking a lot of manual work to clean and handle all data at a go. Our plan at MFN is to keep updating the map in the future as well, with inputs from other sources, including volunteers and users.

A complete list of 82 TV channels, found on the MoIC website as having the operating licenses, has been added in the map. If you see any disparity or duplication in the map, this means that we are still cleaning up the data and working on those issues, and in time, we will reduce the errors and address the issues adequately.

With your feedback and support, MFN expects to develop this visual diagram into a comprehensive map pointing to all operational media outlets across the country.

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