The appointment of RR Shah, an I&B bureaucrat, as Prasar Bharati interim CEO is a clear step in that direction. It is likely that Shah has been given the job to accelerate the winding up of Prasar Bharati. While Mahajan's decision to scrap or whittle down the powers of the Prasar Bharati and revert the two broadcasters to the government has met with a lot of criticism, the fact of the matter is that it matters little whichever way the government turns.DD, because of its wide spread, still gets the maximum audiences. But those numbers in the past have gradually -- and in more recent times -- been rapidly falling. This is despite the fact that the network is offering entertainment, which is mostly made by television producers who provide similar fare to private television channels.

Indian viewers in urbanareas, and this is likely to spread to rural areas too, are simply not enamoured with DD's programming. They prefer to keep their eyeballs rivetted to private channels.The first question here is: Is it the government's job to entertain Indian citizens through television? Or should its role be to use the medium to inform, educate and vent its viewpoint? The latter is obviously preferable. It's clear that entertainment is not doing enough to get DD bottomline black; it's still a flaming red if one goes by Mahajan's statements. The sad part is that it doesn't have the rights to the entertainment programming it shows; private television producers do. Hence, it cannot market the programming internationally and earn revenues like private channels, which own the rights to all their shows.The fact is that DD, with all its staff, simply doesn't know how to market either itself or its shows. Neither is it going to learn to do so in a hurry. And it's not a prime candidate for privatisation either. Its bloated humanresources are bogging it down. Its effort at privatisation of sports air-time marketing has been embroiled in a controversy amidst charges of corruption being hurled by all parties concerned.

Sure, it has tremendous infrastructure in terms of its network of transmitters, studios, trained personnel and uplinking facilities. But the burden of the tremendous overhead makes its quite unattractive to any private party. Parts of DD may seem pretty to private firms, not the whole. So any private party, which buys it will dismantle it, sell its ugly parts, while keeping the parts that are attractive. That will cause a lot of furore: With more than 20,000 people striking and the sale possibly becoming a political issue. Hence, Mahajan's solution of taking the state-caster back into the government fold and using it as a tool to educate and propagate its viewpoint is a better solution. The government -- be it the BJP or the Congress or any other political combo -- should not pay heed to media writers or opinionbuilders who say that DD should not be in government hands. Remember, DD cannot and should not compete with private broadcasters. The past few years have more than proved that. Therefore, if it cannot compete, it should beat its own path. Finally, the ultimate judge of DD's fate should be in the hands of the viewing public who are funding the state-owned broadcaster through the taxes they pay. In the interim, the government has to take care that not too many new hires are added on as well as the existing redundant staff are lopped off through attrition. This is to ensure that the burden on the Indian public doesn't become too heavy.

TNT/Cartoon Network spreading wide

It's touched the magical 8 million mark after converting into an encrypted television channel. TNT & Cartoon Network vice-president and general manager network distribution Anshuman Misra announced this last week on a happy note. Misra says that the channel is also available in a million homes in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

Headded that TNT & Cartoon Network has got most of its current penetration in urban Indian homes and the management is going to be working on pushing the channel in smaller towns by the end of this year. The channel's penetration performance needs to be lauded. But it has to also increase its subscription revenues from India. The network went digital earlier this year but has since then been unsuccessful in getting cable operators to pay for the service. This, despite the fact that it is the only channel that is operating in the children's segment currently. Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and Fox Kids have yet to make a debut in India. Kermit is around but it is not really being promoted currently by its distributor MEN. Discovery and National Geographic are in competition but they belong in another cate-gory.

The writer is the editor of The Indian Cab&Sat Reporter. Feel free to email with your comments to television@vsnl.com or television@hotmail.com.