Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Doordarshan

Timestamp:

May 25, 2012, 12:33:51 PM (13 years ago)

Author:

Parth

Comment:

--

Doordarshan

@@ +1 @@
+
+== Doordarshan ==
+Official title for state-owned Indian television,
+after it was delinked from the AIR and
+established as an independent corporation
+under the Ministry of Information &
+Broadcasting (1976). TV was introduced
+experimentally in 1959, supported by UNESCO,
+the US government and Philips, with a weekly
+half-hour service covering a radius of 40km
+centred on Delhi. With Indira Gandhi as the
+new Information & Broadcasting Minister, this
+became a daily service (1965). In 1972, a
+station was established in Bombay, then in
+Srinagar (1973) followed by Calcutta and
+Madras, with 39 more centres set up in the 80s.
+In 1975, the Satellite Instructional Television
+Experiment (SITE) was launched with support
+from NASA using Delhi and Ahmedabad as
+ground stations to broadcast ‘instructional
+programmes’ to 2500 villages in six states
+(Bihar, MP, Orissa, Rajasthan, AP and
+Karnataka). The programme was briefly
+accompanied by a much smaller but arguably
+more significant experiment at Pij, in Gujarat,
+where a 1-kV transmitter addressed 750
+community sets in 350 villages: several major
+film-makers produced programmes and
+discussed them with the villagers. Colour
+programmes were introduced, controversially,
+in 1982, to telecast the Asian Games in New
+Delhi with imported outside broadcast and
+electronic news-gathering units using Soviet
+satellite services while setting up 20 low-power
+transmitters. The first Indian
+telecommunications satellite assembled at the
+ISRO failed; the second, INSAT 1B, launched in
+1983, also inaugurated the Special Plan for the
+Expansion of the Television Network. The Plan
+claimed to be unique in the history of TV
+expansion, eventually installing 13 high-power
+and 113 low-power transmitters, linking them
+up to make terrestrial broadcasts available to
+70% of the population within a period of 18
+months (1983-4). The Seventh Five-Year plan
+doubled its communications media investment
+to Rs 150 billion, 49% of this sum going to
+Doordarshan alone. Although advertising had
+been allowed since 1977, Doordarshan went
+commercial only in 1982, also making New
+Delhi the centre of a daily ‘national
+programme’ dominating peak-hour viewing.
+Initially, its commercial shows were
+predominantly film-based, such as the
+Chitrahaar series (stringing together song
+sequences from Indian movies) and the
+weekend feature films. Started selling 30’ slots
+for independently made TV serials sponsored
+by advertisers with the serial Hum Log (We, the
+People, 1984-5), a ‘developmental’ soap opera
+sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive and Nestlé. In
+1987, advertising revenue topped Rs 10 billion
+with 65% coming from only six multinational
+corporations. Best-known serials were the
+Hindu epics, Ramayan (by Ramanand Sagar,
+1986-8) and Mahabharat (by B.R. Chopra,
+1988-90). Doordarshan’s monopoly over both
+advertising and news and its role as the ruling
+government’s most effective propaganda
+platform was often criticised. The Janata Party’s
+1977 election manifesto promised to make
+Doordarshan fully autonomous and set up the B. G. Verghese Working Group on Autonomy
+for Akashvani and Doordarshan (1978) to work
+out the logistics of such a move. However, the
+Prasar Bharati bill presented in 1979 offered a
+vastly watered-down version of the promised
+autonomy. The report of the governmentappointed
+Working Group on Software for
+Indian TV, aka the P.C. Joshi Committee Report
+(1984), was extremely critical of Doordarshan’s
+‘Delhi-centrism’, its mode of introducing
+consumerism in the countryside and its
+dependence on foreign networks for
+programme ideas. The report appeared only in
+excerpts in independent journals. Doordarshan
+started collaborating with the NFDC (1988),
+producing films by e.g. Aravindan, Adoor
+Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli, Mira
+Nair and Mani Kaul, initially to reduce its
+massive dependence on the film industry. The
+results were mostly telecast in late-night film
+slots. In 1992-3 the Hong Kong-based STAR-TV
+cable network (subsequently bought by Rupert
+Murdoch) challenged Doordarshan’s
+monopoly. It heralded a major boom in
+commercial satellite channels both in English
+and Hindi (the latter led by STAR subsidiary
+ZEE-TV). 
+
+Between 1993-5 the proliferation of
+cable channels spread to other languages
+(Malayalam with ASIANET, Tamil with SUN),
+depending on a parallel, mainly multinational,
+satellite services industry (e.g. the Pan
+American Satellite-4, Asiasat etc.), which
+provides increasingly cheaper beaming
+facilities over the South Asian footprint.
+Doordarshan’s political control over the Indian
+territory was legally challenged when a
+Supreme Court ruling (13 February 1995)
+declared the Air Waves to be public property.
+In response to the changing situation,
+Doordarshan introduced the commercial Metro
+Channel in 1993, and DD-3 in 1995, as well as
+several regional channels.
+
+[[Studio]]