They once had monopoly on TV broadcasting. Now look at their state. It's an organization we can live without. BSNL and AIR atleast has a purpose to exist for communication. In this digital age DD is a wastage of bandwidth.
Public Broadcaster is necessary and no government in any country ever sells it or hands it over to some private company. Public Service Broadcaster is not there to achieve high ratings but offer mix of entertainment, news , infotainment and most importantly show programs related to public / social causes which covers range of things or spread message / create awareness among public about various government schemes, laws, rights, important announcements etc..
If you watch Doordarshan / Prasar Bharati channels u will see that they offer mix of all of the above things. Sansad TV has excellent news programs, discussion/debate shows, public awareness shows on various topics. DD Bharati has great collection of infotainment shows be it cultural, arts, dance, historical, biographies, etc . DD News and DD India r national and international news channels. All of the regional DD channels too offers good localized content from that state/region and it again covers vast range of topics or genres.
Swayam Prabha channels offer extensive good educational content.
One point which i agree upon is that Doordarshan should have public-private partnership agreement for entertainment programs like it used to have in 90s and early 2000s with Channel 9 Australia wherein private broadcaster buys slots on DD National and revenue earned from ads goes to private broadcaster. This way programming content will have vast improvement. Such an idea was even brought about few years back but till now do not see any update or progress on it. Government should surely ensure that DD Staff showcase good productive skills in crafting new ideas and implementing them within stipulated time so that cost efficiency is also maintained
Government does allocate enough funds to Prasar Bharati and given them adequate autonomy but ofcourse those funds will surely not be that high that qe can expect content like BBC. BBC gets funding from licence fee which is paid by public, similar model cannot be replicated in India. Public-Private partnership model is best suited for public broadcaster in our country.
