How The Hindu reported the birth of India’s public television broadcaster 50 years ago. The terrestrial station went on air on 15 September but the report appeared in the newspaper two days later.
“The experimental television service of All India Radio, inaugurated by President Rajendra Prasad on September 15 at the Vigyan Bhavan is the first in South-East Asia. The TV station, equipped with four cameras, a 500-watt transmitter and other apparatus costing about rupees four lakhs, is housed in a single room on the fifth storey of Akashvani Bhavan, an annexe of the radio station, from where the programmes will be relayed twice every week within a radius of twelve miles.”
Launched under the banner of All India Radio (AIR), it later attained its own brandname, Doordarshan. DD’s trademark signature, first brought to life by Ustad Ali Ahmad Hussain Khan, was later improvised upon by the sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar.
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As a broadcaster mandated to serve the public cause, arts and culture, especially high arts and culture, was the backbone of both AIR and DD till the arrival of satellite television set DD on a hunt for young eyeballs.
Below is the theme music of Surabhi, Doordarshan’s weekly arts and culture show, which used to be hosted by Siddharth Kak.
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Also read: On India’s TV anniversary, no monkeying around
Pratima Puri: India’s first TV news reader passes away
Tejeshwar Singh: A baritone falls silent watching the cacophony
Walking down the memory lane, eyes brimming with tears, I remembered those days when harmony was the hallmark of this country. There was harmony between urban-rural folks, Hindu-Muslim friends, street-street and in every walks of life.
Tejeshwar Singh, the eternally bindas Sadhana Srivastava, Suneet Tandon refuse to fade out of memory. Thanks for giving a quick run through time.
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precisely, the range and quality of programs on erstwhile dd, none of the other channels can even match. and it was so valuable. and i would say it played a crucial rule in forming the bonds of the nation. otherwise how would the country come to love a mysore kid, and how we love the marathi detective and so on…
my only grouse is dd is a political body, bills and other sundry niceties notwithstanding. if only it can transform itself into a enabler of the meritorious and the serious minded. i for one dont understand, why the dd cant enable P. Sainath’s transition, as he ages, into a Bill Moyers? You put the ball in his court, ok so you are concerned, do something about it. Friday 9 to 10 you have a full hour to tell us what you feel.
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also why cant it teach prof. ramachandra and his students and other sundry mysoreans like ullas karanth how to film their research? why should it be national geographic that does it? how about getting kalam to host a “vigyaan” that documents efforts , trials and tribulations of all those slogging in national labs?
how about hooking in somebody like akbar or parthasarathy to do a geo-politics weekly? this is one of my major grouses. barring raman, parthasarathy, karnad etc., very few indian voices actually helping common understand the neighbourhood. i think it was naqwi or was it akbar who pointed out the feudal roots of pakistan for example.
Yaa it is gr8 achievement !!! Not only this,Doordarshan will start the HDTV transmission on an experimental basis by a commercial rollout in time for the Commonwealth games which has to be held in Delhi in 2010 and the viewers will be able to watch the games on HDTV.
tsubba,
A reason why npr, pbs or even nat-geo manage to be independent yet quality-conscious is the way they raise funds or are financed. You must be familiar with the fund raising efforts of npr, pbs etc.
I wonder if anyone in India will shell out anything close to what is necessary to keep a station running regularly and produce quality programs on top of it. And as long as the financing is done by the government of India or corporates, you can be sure that it be just be a political body.
And if there was a way to make a profit by running programs you are asking for – it would have been done long ago by the udaya/ee/mtv/xyz channels.
So for now government is the only way, and we should just be thankful for the gone-by years when prevailing political culture/laws prohibited commercial/private/foreign channels, while dd was allowed to broadcast its sometimes naive/sometimes overtly one-sided/generally sensible/ not too commercial programs.
Both AIR and DD started out as Public Broadcasters. The Green Revolution, the family planning campaign, the concern for enriching
the education system, everything fitted into the public broadcast mode. Ramayana and Mahabharata on DD brought even the most illiterate person to the TV set and created a new style of Hindi language.
Humlog made the family welfare idea so ideally acceptable.
unfortunately both AIR and DD have lost the Public Broadcaster idea and have become more commercial than commercial channels
recalled those days…and lost in the memory lane, how the sundays were!Ramayan, Mahabharat…We (me and my sister) along with our other mates used to go homes who were having TV as we didn’t have the one. During 1 hour serial, murmuring with my sis..and getting scolds from the TV owner-‘What do you undersatnd?Why do you small kids come?’…ahhh! for us it was an adventure!
For a six year old girl, then, TV means only Doordarshan
Now, hundreds of channels with some nonsense serials, reality shows…
Thank you churumuri for refreshing good old days:)
@ TS, AG,
AG is right in saying that there is not much a business model in broadcasting programs that make ‘sense’.
When I was younger, they had something called UGC program on DD. I watched it very regularly and it immensely helped me as a young kid to learn a lot of things but I bet the TRP rating for that program was only slightly higher than Krishi Darshan.
One way to do the things you mention is to run DD by state funds but we have seen that it has not worked well so far. I think NPR does have a similar structure but they also raise a lot of funds otherwise. Then there is an issue of being the govt.’s mouthpiece.
The best I model I have come across till now is the way BBC operates. It is funded by a ‘TV license’ that costs £ 142.5 per TV owning household. Its a criminal offence to not pay the license. So it is a government mandated compulsory tax. But thats where the govt stops.
The money however does not go to BBC directly but BBC has to apply for it from a committee on art/culture. BBC has to compete with other entities for this money.
Then there is a BBC trust that is the regulatory body that tries to give a very hard time to the BBC.
It seemed like an archaic system when I first heard of it and was extremely surprise by lack of dissent towards this huge annual fee. But one can only appreciate why people willingly pay the fee if you spend some time watching BBC in UK.
Here is a short list
* 4 major and 7 ‘regional’ TV channels. Then other chota mota channels for Kids, Parliament etc etc.
* Ad free! Yes, there are no ‘commercial breaks’.
* Full length shows and films. Watch a 58 minute British version of Topgear and a same mangled into a 40 minute American version. You will know the difference. Its the difference between Omelette and Egg burji. Almost, but not quite the same.
* 5 Major and several minor Radio stations
* Arguably world’s best news website (ad-free in UK)
* Most impartial coverage (not perfect, but still the best). You can see stories criticising the government and BBC itself on BBC site. I have even seen TV and Radio hosts openly criticising the PM. Imaging that happening on DD.
* One of the world’s best produced programs on … well, everything. Excellent research, cinematography, narration, editing. There is wildlife, culture, art everything. In fact, one of the best programs I have seen about India (Micheal Wood’s The story of India) was produced by BBC.
* Free digital catch-up service through iPlayer
* Digital terrestrial broadcast with interactive TV
* High definition TV over terrestrial network (in progress)
* High definition satellite TV
* Ad-free sports coverage of all major events.F1, Wimbledon (duh!), Cricket, football, all without commercial breaks
* I will stop before this turns into a BBC advertisement.
But, I can not imagine starting a TV license system in India. I remember seeing ‘Radio License’ stamps from in my dad’s old documents. So we did have radio license but it would still be incredibly difficult to go for a TV license.
But a strong ‘independent’ governing body and taxpayer funding can let DD do all you mentioned and more. I have also heard very good things about the state owned television in Scandinavian countries. Probably there is a lot to learn there too.
But the question remains, do we want to do that? Or more precisely, do our netas and babus want to do that.
shas3n,
If it is fees, you agree it is not just government and other big bodies, but comes down to individual viewers willingly (or unknowingly) shelling out money.
Will that happen in India? We are cost conscious and wont shell out money for anything (maybe for good reasons) – especially when we know someone else is going to spend it for us.
So forget netas and babus (who were in a way responsible for DD), good luck convincing (or collecting) even from a few people the necessary fees to run a nationwide TV station.
Well, some of the comments are a little too emotional, I think. May be, it’s fun to watch these little video clips today and think of our childhood. But, it would be wrong to say that DD was one of the greatest. Honestly, DD had no idea of entertainment. It was quite dissappointing to see how they used to waste thousands of hours of air-time in useless / boring programs. Since we had no other option, we sat and watched everything came from Delhi….including ‘Krishi Darshan’ !!!
Today, we have more options – but the quality seems to be equally pathetic. Most of the channels have not come out of the notion that “entertainment = movie songs”. Who knows ? May be, 25 years from now, today’s generation may exchange similar emotional posts on “how Udaya movie channel was great” or “Jaggesh was the true comedian”!!
let me put it this way. why do countries like US and India invest huge sums in national labs? for precisely those reasons India should invest in doordarshan. for them, since they have developed other institutions that can propogate their worldview, they can afford to do superficial stuff like being critical of their leader. the real question is are they/will they question national impulse and agenda, especially with respect to outsiders? even in a country like india, when it comes to big issues, there is a continuity of ideas across parties and personalities. imagine how evolved this must be in countries like UK and US? take emmissions for example. do you see the duplicity in the stand of western intelligencia and how these are lovingly carried on in our favourite subscription based media?
how about iran? anybody question the self assumed moral superiority and usurping of all arbitration rights by the west. india conducted tests, and was put in sanction. the west actually went out and invaded another country and presided over the death of millions for nearly a decade. anybody sanction them for anything? how is it that they can get away with just media being critical of their leaders? the hindu and aleemuddin street also said critical things in 1998. that should have been sufficient no? when their leaders fukk up, only the leader is singled out and punished, in iraq’s case how could the morally superior west punish the entire community for the excesses of their leader? and more importantly how come the duplicity of all this does not occur to the western media and intelligencia?
back to my principal concern. has or will any of the US/UK media highlight the direct culpability of UK and reflected culpability of US in creating and sustaining Pakistan? Will they ever talk about the costs of this for ordinary Indians, not to mention Afghanistanis and Bangladeshis(only a freaky Ted Kennedy spoke out in 1971)? Does anybody talk about about the the shenanigans of british general Olaf Caroe in Kashmir, 1948 and how we are still bearing the consequence of his service to her majesty to this day?
after centuries, it is important for us to able to tell our own stories, to be able to create our own myths and propoganda. the bbc and npr are great. their means and methods are sophisticated and can sweep starry eyed third worlders like me off my feet. but they essentially perpetuate a eurocentric worldview and thought and carry subtle psyops. i will give another example. when adiga’s book was released, a local publisher came on radio, and said, it is a wonderful because it has all the issues that we like in a india story. you figure out what she meant and what she elaborated on.
please read the late prof. edward said’s take on all this.
loosely, this why i keep visiting churumuri, even though i dont agree with 99.99% of the editorials. the context is slightly more localized. for me it is important our man is doing the story telling, even if i wish he were more rooted.
TS,
Why dont you start you own TV/radio station and spin your own yarns?
Despite its lack of technial blitz , right from the beginning, DD doesn’t do froth-in -the-mouth news coverage and kill a story to death. That’s why I would always prefer a salma Sultana to Barkha Dutt, Neethi Ravindran to Ananya/ Bhosle / Verma. The main difference is: They conveyed the news with minimum fuss. Now they read the news as if they are creating it with lot of histrionics and oomph! All for TRP?
But I must compliment the young reporters who are prepared to sweat it out in all sorts of conditions, threat to their lives without flinching. If only the big bosses develop a sense of proportion, a sense of neutrality while giving their views and not become ‘Chamchas’ of ruling party, watching news could still become a pleasure.
one point i forgot to mention: bbc itself derives significant early mover advantages including captive markets from the days of british imperialism.
ERR, news is one issue. there are other cultural productions that dd and entities like nfdc can act as an incubator for. i learnt here on churumuri, that cr simha and his gang took a sabbatical from dd bangalore and made kakana kote. i prefer that to kipling anyday. there is another example, please check NYT’s review of ghatashraddha. i saw GS and understood 20 different things. the NYT reviewer completely missed each of those 20 things and got stuck at technical issues, which i also observed. that is what happens. we are different people. we have our experiences. while we can learn many things from west, we should not defining ourselves and limiting our own understanding to their levels. they have their limitations. they have to lead their own lives and understand their own condition, the rest of the world they can only understand in formulaic ways. but what is formula for them is real life for us.
3, there is an interesting question ashtaavadhani ganesh asks. indians have produced in english and other western languages like greek. why havenot westerners produced anything in indian languages? my question, is their anything more to indian existence other than gungadin in western eyes?
Looking at the 100+ channels on the idiot box today one becomes nostalgic about the good old DD. After all if I am asked to name the best serials that I have seen on TV, I would name Buniyad, Humlog, Bharat ek Khoj, Turning Point, Yeh jo hai Zindagi, Malgudi days, Swami and Friends, Wagle ki Duniya,Surabhi,Phool khile hain Gulshan Gulshan, Ghalib, Naseeruddin Hodja,Tamas, Karmachand, Nukkad, Fauji, Circus, Srikant, Vyomkesh Bakshi, Mungerilal, Chanakya, Mahabharat, Pritish Nandi Show, The World This Week.Notably all of them except Pritish nandi show were on DD.
And who can forget the DD news readers. The worst among them like Minu look a hundred times better composed than today’s shrill princesses and princes.
Though one used to curse the news content as being one sided government propaganda today the best news and current affairs shows are on Lok Sabha TV and DD. Cheers