The Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Ravi Shankar Prasad, stated that his ministry would give priority to encourage creativity, professionalism and competition on Doordarshan and All India Radio so that it could take on the private channels.

Presiding over the meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to his ministry, Prasad said that the effort would be to promote creativity so that development presentation also becomes entertainment. The other area being given priority would be films which have a growth rate of 100 per cent and great potential of employment and revenue generation. He said that he would see that this sector gets the best incentives, initiative, and support.

The Minister said that both DD and AIR have the best available talent and are capable of producing much better programmes, but what they must do is to project themselves properly and market aggressively. He said that the Government would provide more support for content creation.

Prasad said that both DD and AIR would project the Tenth Plan in order to inform people so that they are able to participate in the implementation of this ‘People’s Plan’. He said that the public service broadcaster character of Doordarshan and AIR must be maintained and should not be affected by commercial considerations.

The meeting was informed that DD India, the International Channel of Doordarshan, was extremely popular among Indians abroad. It beams live national events like Republic Day and Independence Day celebrations for its global audience. Its programming aims at offering an update on India’s social, cultural, political and economic scene.

It carries ‘live’ news bulletins in Hindi, English, Sanskrit and Urdu, hourly news headlines, features on political events and discussions on events of national and international significance. DD India also began telecasting regional language bulletins in Malayalam, Gujarati and Tamil to begin with. The Channel now telecasts 18 hours of fresh programming.

The meeting was also informed that the Development Communication Division has undertaken publicity campaigns for several Central ministries and departments. The rural development campaign is targeted at 600 districts and six lakh villages, broadcasting programmes in 29 languages and dialects. Over 1,000 programmes and 233 spots have been produced on Health Care, Population and Poverty, Pulse Polio, Blood Donation, AIDS Awareness, Iodine Deficiency, etc.

Doordarshan commands a viewership of 259 million. As compared to this, among private channels, Star Plus, has a viewership of 54 million, Sony 41 million and Zee TV 36 million. DD reaches 259 million as compared to the combined viewership of 166 million of all private channels.

Reliance Infocomm is tying up with a string of film production houses and music video makers for streaming audio and video trailers on its code division multiple access (CDMA) handsets. It is also targeting fast moving consumer goods, consumer electronics and other marketers for streaming advertisements and interactive contests. According to sources, marketing companies would be able to deliver targeted advertisement and information videos to Reliance users. The all-India reach and multi-language support of the network will enable marketers to deliver communication messages targeted at consumers by their region and language. To enable companies to measure customer response to their advertisements, they will have the facility to issue digital discount coupons against each download of their message and/or advertisements.

These digital coupons, in turn, will be stored on the mobile phones. The user can avail of the discount by displaying the coupons to the nearest dealer or service point.

The interactive mode of communication platform will also help companies to gather instant response from customers to their communication messages.