The DD prime channel, which will focus on theatre, art and culture, is likely to be launched by October-November followed by the movie channel, the new acting chief executive officer of Prasar Bharati Rajiv Ratna Shah told PTI. The acting chief executive officer also said the movie channel will show foreign films apart from Indian ones and DD was working out arrangements with renowned production houses like MGM and Warner Bros.Shah, who took over the reins of the controversial public broadcaster last month, said he soon plans to give a new look to DD-I and DD-II by bringing in massive changes through an assortment of content and entertainment programmes.

He said DD-II will be an entertainment channel and the quality of programmes will bebetter.

The CEO, who is additional secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, dismissed allegations of bias in DD's news coverage as `misplaced apprehensions' and said the reporting was balanced and all parties were projected.

Shah said the news channel would give 24-hour coverage of the election proceedings with a team of psephologists and anchors. While all hard news on the channel will be in-house, the soft news may be either produced through co-productions or given on contract.

Purely a satellite channel, which is actually to be launched in September, it would also have business news, sports round-ups, employment news, environmental issues, travel and cuisine, lifestyle and leisure.

DD-II will have a daily slot for foreign films while DD-I will show two feature films a week, not just through NFDC, but also acquired through open bidding, he said. At present DD-I shows only one film through NFDC each week.Shah asserted that DD's revenues will not be allowed to go down and thatseveral steps had been taken to tone up the commercial side.

In order to augment revenue, DD has told its business partners that there would be no business relationship in future if they remained in arrears and got into litigation with Prasar Bharati.

He said DD has taken firm measures to liquidate the arrears not with the intention of disqualifying the business partners but to drive home the point that there should be a `win-win situation' for both sides. The new CEO said DD needed revamping and several decisions had been taken to improve programme quality.

Listing out the measures, he said decisions had been taken regarding the engineering configuration of the transmission system, upgradation of programme content, packaging of programme content, digitalisation and modernisation of DD-I and DD-II.

He said it was also decided to provide a transponder for an educational channel.

To ensure clear Doordarshan transmission, the Prasar Bharati board has asked the Government to promulgate an ordinanceamending the Cable Act, to make it mandatory for cable operators to show DD on prime band other than those carrying terrestrial frequencies and should be in satellite mode through dish antenna.

The Government, before it lost its majority in the Lok Sabha, had announced that it would be amending the act to this effect.