And with the government clenching its fist and asking it to generate its own resources, Doordarshan is once again knocking the doors of Hollywood and Bollywood to help it out of this tricky situation. Bids have been invited for a daily English feature film and count-down show and plans are also afoot to telecast a Hindi feature film everyday. The final date for receiving bids for the English language feature film and the count-down shows has been extended from July-end to August 9.

Apart from the round-the-clock news channel forced upon it by rivals like STAR News and ZEE News, Doordarshan is also extending its main infotainment channel, DD-II or the Metro channel. Thus, DD-II will be available terrestrially up to midnight as at present and via dish antennae round-theclock.

With the Election Commission rejecting Prasar Bharati's suggestion for issuance of an ordinance to compel cable networks to show its main channels, refurbishing its programming may also help Doordarshan in attracting viewership. Although the Cable Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 lays down that operators would have to show at least two Doordarshan channels, it does not specify the channels.

At present, Doordarshan has 19 channels including the International DD India, its only 24-hour channel. DD-I and DD-II have a fix of education, information and entertainment, DD-IV to XIII and DD-18 are regional channels, DD-XIV to XVII network the regional services of four Hindi speaking states, and DD Sports telecasts for about six hours everyday.

In preparation of the DD news channel from August 15, the channel has commenced telecast of news bulletins on the hour, every hour, on DD-I. Under the new schedule, there are a total of 11 Hindi news bulletins which includes one of regional news, and 10 English newsbulletins. One Urdu bulletin is telecast on the Metro channel everyday at 2:25 pm.