Thakur
Banned
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The demand from both the poor and those
who are now called the neo middle class for
information that can help improve their lives
is huge. Information on Doordarshan on
existing government schemes is in demand,
but in the local context they need that to go
a step further: where to go in one’s own
district to access these?
A study that took in districts that included
Kalahandi and Kandhamal in Odisha,
Dantewada and Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Tapi in
the Dangs in Gujarat, Adilabad in Telangana
and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh found that the
unmet, felt need for public service
programming are several. Agriculture, health,
vocational training, tutorials for youth and
children, employment information, and
serials with positive values are among them.
These are not on offer on most private
channels.
Expressed health information needs include:
knowing how much incentive money the
government gives when a delivery takes place
in a hospital, knowing how to handle a child’s
wound, when a tetanus shot is required.
What a pregnant woman should eat, when she
should go for health check-ups, how many
iron tablets to take. An award-winning health
programme called Kalyani, which tackled all
of these, ran for several years and still has
high recall, but DD discontinued it.
Today the quantum of health information on
the broadcaster falls short of the needs.
Except in Chhattisgarh, where for reasons
explained later, it cannot be accessed.
The scheduling challenge of public service
telecasts is that both men and women who
work in the fields for a living only have time
for TV after 7 pm. That is when they want all
their informative programmes—their news,
their agriculture shows, the information on
job cards, and on other government schemes.
Or at least repeats of these. And the delivery
challenge also is that if you are giving much
of this on a terrestrial transmission, they will
not reach the majority population.
The hunger is for all kinds of information,
women watch food shows on whichever
channel they can access them, whether the
ingredients are locally available or not.
“Without TV”, an old woman in Sambalpur in
Odisha said, “We would be backward.”
But the segment of viewers most anxious
about their unmet information needs is youth
in search of vocational guidance and jobs if
they are older, and tutorials on TV if they are
younger. You have to comprehend this to
understand why it was such a blow to many
students to have the curriculum-based Gyan
Darshan channels go off Doordarshan’s
direct-to-home (DTH) platform in June this
year because of problems between DD, the
human resource development ministry and
the Indian Space Research Organisation. They
are still off the air, slated to resume in early
September.
These are the sort of things parents and
youth say. In Phulbani in Kandhamal district:
“The youth become unemployed even after
getting education…Some have passed +2 and
some passed +3…There is no resource…Out
of 300 and 350 households 5 or 6 persons
may be doing a job…and rest around 500
people are getting livelihood by doing daily
labour…Many of the households have no
agricultural land…”
In Ahmedabad: “We have to spend so much
on tuition fees, in Juhapura a lot of people
cannot afford tuition fees. It would be great
if there are programmes on TV that will help
us to avoid spending so much money on
tuitions and simultaneously help the children
to learn and score better in exams.”
“We learn only basic English, we don’t have
confidence in speaking English when we go
out. There should be a channel which will
gradually teach us English over a period of
time. If we watch it daily for a small amount
of time it will gradually teach us proper
English.” Or, “There should be a programme
which teaches us how to ‘chat’.”
In West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh, youth in
a village say they scour Monster.com for job
information either at Internet centres or on
mobiles.
Youth: “For bank jobs, government jobs and
IT jobs, we refer to Jobsadda.com . Also the
newspapers Sakshi and Deccan Chronicle.”
Do they watch TV for employment, education,
career guidance programmes? “No career
guidance programmes, very rarely we get
some programmes on these topics.”
This demographic segment has little use for
Doordarshan. The channels to watch, they
say, are Star Movies, HBO, NatGeo and
Animal Planet . “We watch English movies for
improving our communication skills.” And the
other channels mentioned above to improve
their general knowledge.
A government alive to the change potential of
broadcasting has to recognize that it must
privilege broadcasting over broadcaster.
Today, to access the kind of programming
they feel a need for, some Indians at the
bottom of the income ladder are bypassing
the state-owned broadcaster. They are
sometimes opting for DTH platforms other
than Doordarshan’s DD Direct, and rejecting
terrestrial transmission which gives them
only a single channel.
In heavily cabled states like Andhra Pradesh,
rural viewers opt for cable. Some needs are
met by channels like Discovery and National
Geographic that are mentioned so often in
focus groups, both urban and rural, that
along with general entertainment channels
like Star Plus , Zee or Colors they can be
seen as drivers of platform choice. The cost
of subscribing to a DTH platform or digitized
cable pinches low-income families, but DD
Direct, which might otherwise have been the
most affordable platform (because there is no
monthly subscription), loses out because
cartoons and Animal Planet for the children
is a must. DD National in the month
monitored for programming break up (August
2012), had less than 1% of its programming
hours devoted to programmes for children.
Agriculture broadcasting
Agricultural programming is a felt need in
every state but does not reach its target
because the scheduling is wrong, there are
power cuts, and the audience’s own platform
shift deprives them of local farm
programmes on terrestrial transmission.
It is supremely ironical that the state which
offers the most agriculture programming
faces a major challenge in reaching its
audience.
Chhattisgarh Doordarshan puts out a four-
hour public service transmission every day
with conscientious dollops of agriculture,
health education, news, folk music, and
current affairs in its programming mix.
Almost 20% of its programming time is
devoted to agricultural telecasts. It is an
entirely terrestrial transmission.MORE READ AT http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/FlkFHcxr832UZem5kmrKAN/How-public-broadcasting-is-missing-its-audience.html
who are now called the neo middle class for
information that can help improve their lives
is huge. Information on Doordarshan on
existing government schemes is in demand,
but in the local context they need that to go
a step further: where to go in one’s own
district to access these?
A study that took in districts that included
Kalahandi and Kandhamal in Odisha,
Dantewada and Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Tapi in
the Dangs in Gujarat, Adilabad in Telangana
and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh found that the
unmet, felt need for public service
programming are several. Agriculture, health,
vocational training, tutorials for youth and
children, employment information, and
serials with positive values are among them.
These are not on offer on most private
channels.
Expressed health information needs include:
knowing how much incentive money the
government gives when a delivery takes place
in a hospital, knowing how to handle a child’s
wound, when a tetanus shot is required.
What a pregnant woman should eat, when she
should go for health check-ups, how many
iron tablets to take. An award-winning health
programme called Kalyani, which tackled all
of these, ran for several years and still has
high recall, but DD discontinued it.
Today the quantum of health information on
the broadcaster falls short of the needs.
Except in Chhattisgarh, where for reasons
explained later, it cannot be accessed.
The scheduling challenge of public service
telecasts is that both men and women who
work in the fields for a living only have time
for TV after 7 pm. That is when they want all
their informative programmes—their news,
their agriculture shows, the information on
job cards, and on other government schemes.
Or at least repeats of these. And the delivery
challenge also is that if you are giving much
of this on a terrestrial transmission, they will
not reach the majority population.
The hunger is for all kinds of information,
women watch food shows on whichever
channel they can access them, whether the
ingredients are locally available or not.
“Without TV”, an old woman in Sambalpur in
Odisha said, “We would be backward.”
But the segment of viewers most anxious
about their unmet information needs is youth
in search of vocational guidance and jobs if
they are older, and tutorials on TV if they are
younger. You have to comprehend this to
understand why it was such a blow to many
students to have the curriculum-based Gyan
Darshan channels go off Doordarshan’s
direct-to-home (DTH) platform in June this
year because of problems between DD, the
human resource development ministry and
the Indian Space Research Organisation. They
are still off the air, slated to resume in early
September.
These are the sort of things parents and
youth say. In Phulbani in Kandhamal district:
“The youth become unemployed even after
getting education…Some have passed +2 and
some passed +3…There is no resource…Out
of 300 and 350 households 5 or 6 persons
may be doing a job…and rest around 500
people are getting livelihood by doing daily
labour…Many of the households have no
agricultural land…”
In Ahmedabad: “We have to spend so much
on tuition fees, in Juhapura a lot of people
cannot afford tuition fees. It would be great
if there are programmes on TV that will help
us to avoid spending so much money on
tuitions and simultaneously help the children
to learn and score better in exams.”
“We learn only basic English, we don’t have
confidence in speaking English when we go
out. There should be a channel which will
gradually teach us English over a period of
time. If we watch it daily for a small amount
of time it will gradually teach us proper
English.” Or, “There should be a programme
which teaches us how to ‘chat’.”
In West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh, youth in
a village say they scour Monster.com for job
information either at Internet centres or on
mobiles.
Youth: “For bank jobs, government jobs and
IT jobs, we refer to Jobsadda.com . Also the
newspapers Sakshi and Deccan Chronicle.”
Do they watch TV for employment, education,
career guidance programmes? “No career
guidance programmes, very rarely we get
some programmes on these topics.”
This demographic segment has little use for
Doordarshan. The channels to watch, they
say, are Star Movies, HBO, NatGeo and
Animal Planet . “We watch English movies for
improving our communication skills.” And the
other channels mentioned above to improve
their general knowledge.
A government alive to the change potential of
broadcasting has to recognize that it must
privilege broadcasting over broadcaster.
Today, to access the kind of programming
they feel a need for, some Indians at the
bottom of the income ladder are bypassing
the state-owned broadcaster. They are
sometimes opting for DTH platforms other
than Doordarshan’s DD Direct, and rejecting
terrestrial transmission which gives them
only a single channel.
In heavily cabled states like Andhra Pradesh,
rural viewers opt for cable. Some needs are
met by channels like Discovery and National
Geographic that are mentioned so often in
focus groups, both urban and rural, that
along with general entertainment channels
like Star Plus , Zee or Colors they can be
seen as drivers of platform choice. The cost
of subscribing to a DTH platform or digitized
cable pinches low-income families, but DD
Direct, which might otherwise have been the
most affordable platform (because there is no
monthly subscription), loses out because
cartoons and Animal Planet for the children
is a must. DD National in the month
monitored for programming break up (August
2012), had less than 1% of its programming
hours devoted to programmes for children.
Agriculture broadcasting
Agricultural programming is a felt need in
every state but does not reach its target
because the scheduling is wrong, there are
power cuts, and the audience’s own platform
shift deprives them of local farm
programmes on terrestrial transmission.
It is supremely ironical that the state which
offers the most agriculture programming
faces a major challenge in reaching its
audience.
Chhattisgarh Doordarshan puts out a four-
hour public service transmission every day
with conscientious dollops of agriculture,
health education, news, folk music, and
current affairs in its programming mix.
Almost 20% of its programming time is
devoted to agricultural telecasts. It is an
entirely terrestrial transmission.MORE READ AT http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/FlkFHcxr832UZem5kmrKAN/How-public-broadcasting-is-missing-its-audience.html
