Dd Newsreaders Force I & B Ministry To Stall Gradation Plan
An expert committee proposes, the information and broadcasting ministry disposes. Pressure from a section of Doordarshan (DD) newsreaders has forced the ministry to defer implementing certain recommendations of a gradation committee set up to look into the fee structure and performances of newsreaders.
After assessing the newsreaders, the gradation committee had recommended that those graded in category `D should be disqualified. But intense lobbying by some newsreaders has resulted in the ministry deferring any action on this recommendation for the next six month.
However, the committees recommendation that the newsreaders fee structure should be based on gradation rather than the importance of the bulletins has been accepted by the ministry. The current practice is that newsreaders are paid a higher fee for prime time bulletins.
Some of the newsreaders who received `B and `C grades - not the experts first choice for prime time news bulletins- had even met information and broadcasting minister, C M Ibrahim. They pointed out to the minister that they had been appearing on prime time for years but suddenly the expert committee found them unfit for the job.
Though the disqualification issue will be taken up after six months from February 1, 1997, when the position will be reviewed, the newsreaders classified in `D category by the committee have been taken off prime time and given non-prime time assignments like the two-minute bulletins, a senior DD official told Business Standard yesterday. The gradation committee, however, had recommended that `D category newsreaders should not be assigned any bulletins at all.
The ministrys task has been complicated by the fact that very few English newsreaders were considered good enough to be included in the A category fit for prime time news bulletins- by the committee. Most of the English newsreaders like Minu and Sukanya, who have been reading prime time English news bulletins for years, had been only put in category `B by the gradation committee, which met last year.
However, the committee had suggested that category `B newsreaders could also be assigned prime time bulletins if the situation so requires.
Doordarshan newsreaders found not suitable for newsreading will be assigned some suitable work elsewhere to utilise their talents fully, said sources, adding that the objective of the whole exercise was the maintenance of a uniformly high standard of news presentation. A sizeable number of regular DD newsreaders comprise contractual persons.
Out of 32 Hindi newsreaders, 10 have been placed in category A and `B each, while six have been placed in category `C and `D respectively. Out of 27 English newsreaders, four were found good enough to be in category `A, 12 qualified for category `B, six were put in category `C and five in category `D. Among the 12 Urdu newsreaders, only one qualified for category `A, while five have been slotted in grade `B.
The gradation committee included experts like Kamleshwar, former All India Radio newsreaders Deoki Nandan Pant and Pratima Puri, journalist Chanchal Sarkar and Urdu scholar Tanvir Ahmad.