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Anil Wanvari
The business media has been rife with reports on how state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan has been losing market share to private channels. And efforts are on in the media to try to build the perception that DD is history as far as viewers are concerned. The press has ticked off the government for continuing in broadcasting and says he'd like it to be put under the auctioneer's hammer. Reports say DD is in big trouble as it is losing ad revenue to private satellite television channels.
One columnist said "Because of the huge staff and idle assets, the government is losing money, while its many rivals are either making money or on their way to breaking even. Yes, the government will say that DD's sole objective is not to make money, it also has to do public service broadcasting. Fine, but there is a cheaper way."
" If the government has an announcement to make or wants to beam a prime ministerial speech, time can be set apart by all private channels - it is easy to legislate this. The merit in all this isthat there is no confusion of objectives, and the results can be measured. "The problem for the politician would be that this leaves no room for claptrap about national objectives, foreign media control, and all other humbug which is used to cover up the real objective keeping Doordarshan as a political toy for the government of the day.
This writer's opinion is that the time is not ripe - as yet - to sell DD. And it will not be for quite a few years. For one, the government needs both All India Radio and DD to reach out to and communicate its point of view with the billion of people that India is home to.
This is essential for better governance. Yes, the government can insist that the best private channels have to carry governmental messages, and they may well carry them. However, the government view may be distorted or wrongly perceived by private channels through follow-up programms. It can't keep going back to them for correcting the distortions. With its own media vehicle on hand, it can speak itsmind at any time. Second, we may call whatever the state-owned broadcaster dishes out currently to viewers as claptrap. It is not as jazzy as the stuff the Sonys, Zees and Stars of the television world churn out. And hence, it may be grabbing fewer viewers in the urban areas. But urban India is not the only India that there is though many folks in advertising and in armchairs would like us to believe that. There is the rural India. And it's many more times larger than the urban India. It is this India which tunes into DD (and All India Radio) to be informed, educated, entertainment and even manipulated. The Indian government has spent several crores in setting up the infrastructure - albeit in not the best manner -- to reach the hinterlands. Why throw away what has been created through painstaking effort? Even if it is for money.
Will DD find a buyer for its assets at that price? And what will the buyer do: will he just rip apart the DD network and focus only on those operations - namely urban areas - andprogramming that show a profit? Will that mean a surfeit of alien soaps, song and dance shows, and films and cricket? And to what will then the real Indian in the rural areas turn to? Satellite TV? No, it is prohibitively expensive for the rural masses. Cable TV? Cable TV, while it is expanding, reaches out to only about 22 odd million homes, while there are 65-70 odd million TV sets in India. This means two-thirds of TV homes are not connected to cable TV. Even if we consider that by an act of God all TV homes get cabled in the next six months, what will the rural Indian watch?
Cable TV today offers little programming which is of relevance to her/him. Even the National Geographics and Discoveries, which are providing some amount of entertaining education to urban Indians, would be alien to the rural Indian. Forget about the soaps and the absolute rubbish that comes across as entertainment on television. They will only serve to heighten the rural Indian's aspirations and consequently possibly lead to anincrease in the crime rate. Then there is the language barrier all over India; that is why DD has so many kendras and channels and programs in so many languages. Will a private programmer invest in catering to all the languages? And will he be willing to lose money like DD has? Rather than sell DD, what the government should do is draw up a coordinated plan to use it more effectively for development as planned by its founding fathers.
There have been experiments like SITE which have clearly shown that television works as an educational tool. The government needs to hire - or empower -- the right people to do the job of developmental programming. There are many bright minds within DD which have been left to atrophy; these are the ones, which should be given the freedom to come up with a right balance between education and entertainment as far as programming is concerned. It can take the help of foreign public broadcasting experts and even Indian companies that have the expertise to develop slickdevelopmental programmes. To be sure, there will be advertisers willing to sponsor some of these programmes as long as the slick programmes attract viewers in the hinterlands.
If possible, it should hand out pink slips to some staff who simply can't make the grade. If it cannot (remember the unions), it should freeze recruitment, and wait for the wasters to simply retire. One can't - though one would ideally like to -- absolutely wish away the misuse of DD's resources by political parties. But if a committed government so desires, it can draw up legislation, which provides autonomy and ensures that day-to-day political interference is minimal. A successful example, though not in the same business, the NDDB, is very much there for all to see.
In addition to all this, to keep DD extremely competitive, the government can throw open terrestrial broadcasting to all. And, as for money, it can earn some of that too, by leasing out the under-utilised or unutilised portion of its infrastructure to private partiesinterested in terrestrial broadcasting.
The writer can be reached at wanvari@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in or television@hotmail.com.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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