DD to soon have creative head to enhance quality of programmes: Javadekar

A creative head will soon be appointed for Doordarshan to enhance the quality of its programmes, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said Thursday, asserting that steps are being taken to modernise the public broadcaster.

Javadekar, who inaugurated video walls in all eight Doordarshan studios and an earth station at the DD Kendra here, said the national broadcaster is synonymous with credibility.

He said that under the three-year action plan of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, support has been given to Doordarshan to modernise its infrastructure.

"The addition of state of the art video walls and spectrum efficient satellite equipment, is a step in the direction of revamping the public service broadcaster," Javadekar said.

The minister asked officials to work towards expanding the spread of DD Free Dish from the current 3.25 crore households to 5 crore households.

He announced that a creative head will soon be brought in for DD to further boost programming and high quality content creation.

I&B Ministry Secretary Amit Khare said the government is committed to supporting Doordarshan and the All India Radio in every possible way to ensure that the public service broadcasters are able to provide services of contemporary industry standards, reaching out to every nook and corner of India.

Chairman Prasar Bharati A Surya Prakash lauded the efforts of Doordarshan and highlighted that in the recent past a number of impactful and meaningful programmes have been created, which have taken the flagship schemes of the government to the door steps of people.

Director General Doordarshan Supriya Sahu told reporters on the sidelines of the event that Doordarshan is fast modernising and its capacity is unmatched.

She also said that Doordarshan should not be compared with private channels as its mandate is different -- it seeks to empower and inform people.

The state-of-the-art video walls, installed at a cost of Rs 10.75 crores under the ministry's action plan, are at par with those in studio centres of leading international broadcasters, an official release said.

The induction of video walls will save a lot of time in physical erection of sets. It will give greater flexibility through dynamic change of backdrop by introducing live or recorded videos, graphics etc. in studio sets as per programme requirement.

The earth station, which is based on spectrum efficient technology, will result in increasing capacity to almost double the number of channels in the same bandwidth.

The new earth station is HD capable and can give all the national channels of DD in HD. This state of art earth station will enable DD to save cost on teleport of DD channels and also allow inclusion of new channels in DD bouquet, the statement said.