Origin and History of Indian Television
Origin and History of Indian Television
Doordarshan had a modest beginning with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi in September 1959 with a small transmitter and a makeshift studio. The regular daily transmission started in 1965 as a part of all India radio. The television service was extended to Bombay and Amritsar in 1972. Till 1975, seven Indian cities had television service and Doordarshan remained the only television channel in India.
Television first came to India [named as
‘Doordarshan’ DD] on Sept 15, 1959 as
the National Television
Network of India. The first telecast started on Sept 15, 1959 in New Delhi.
After a gap of about 13 years, s second
television station was established in Mumbai Maharashtra) in 1972 and by 1975
there were five more television stations at Srinagar Kashmir), Amritsar Punjab,
Calcutta West Bengal, Madras Tamil Nadu and Lucknow Uttar Pradesh. Fo r many
years the transmission was mainly in black & white. Television industry got
the necessary boost in the eighties when Doordarshan introduced colour TV
during the 1982 Asian Games.
Indian small screen programming
started off in the early 1980 s. At that time there was only one national
channel Doordarshan, which was government owned. The Ramayana and Mahabharat
was the first major television series produced. This ass Communication Ethics & Laws
serial notched up the world
record in viewer ship numbers for a single program. By the late 1980s more and
more people started to own television sets. Though there was a single channel,
television programming had reached saturation. Hence the government opened up
another channel which had part national programming and part regional. This
channel was known as DD -2 later DD
Metro. Both channels were broadcast terrestrially.
The central government launched
a series of economic and social reforms in 1991 under Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao. Under the new policies the government allowed private and foreign
broadcasters to engage in limited operations in India. This process has been
pursued consistently by all subsequent federal administrations. Foreign
channels like CNN, Star TV and domestic channels such as Zee TV and Sun TV
started satellite broadcasts. Starting with 41 sets in 1962 and one channel
Audience Research unit, 1991 at present, TV in India covers more than 70
million homes giving a viewing population more than 400 million individuals
through more than 100 channels. A large relatively untapped market, easy
accessibility of relevant technology and a variety of programmes are the main
reasons for rapid expansion of Television in India.
In 1992, the government
liberated its markets, opening them up to cable television. Five new channels
belonging to the Hong Kong based STAR TV gave Indians a fresh breath of life.
MTV, STAR Plus, BBC, Prime Sports and STAR Chinese Channel were the 5 channels. Zee TV was the first private owned Indian
channel to broadcast over cable. A few years later CNN, Discovery Channel,
National Geographic Channel made its foray into India. Star expanded its
bouquet introducing STAR World, STAR Sports, ESPN and STAR Gold. Regional
channels flourished along with a multitude of Hindi channels and a few English
channels. By 2001 HBO and History Channel were the other international channels
to enter India. By 2001-2003, other international channels such as Nickelodeon,
Cartoon Network, VH1, Disney and Toon Disney came into foray. In 2003 news
channels started to boom.
Broadcasting was harnessed for
the task of political nation building. Broadcasting was organized as the sole
preserve of the chief architect of this process of political 3:
Mass Communication Ethics & Laws
integration the State. The
task of broadcasting was to help in overcoming the immediate crisis of
political instability that followed Independence and to foster the long-term
process of political modernization and nation building that was the dominant
ideology of the newly formed state.
It was in the context of this
dominant thinking about the role of broadcasting in India that television was introduced
in 1959. The government had been reluctant to invest in television until then
because it was felt that a poor country like India could not afford the medium.
Television had to prove its role in the development process before it could
gain a foot-hold in the country.
Television broadcasts started from Delhi in September 1959
as part of All India Radio's services. Programs were broadcast twice a week for
an hour a day on such topics as community health, citizens’ duties and rights,
and traffic and road sense.
In 1961 the broadcasts were
expanded to include a school educational television project. In time, Indian
films and programs consisting of compilation of musicals from Indian films
joined the program line-up as the first entertainment programmes. A limited
number of old U.S. and British shows were also telecast.
The first major expansion of
television in India began in 1972, when a second television station was opened
in Bombay. This was followed by stations in Srinagar and Amritsar 1973, and
Calcutta, Madras and Lucknow in 1975. Relay stations were also set up in a
number of cities to extend the coverage of the regional stations. In 1975, the
government carried out the first test of the possibilities of satellite based
television through the SITE program. SITE
Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) was designed to test whether
satellite based television services could play a role in socio-economic
development.
In these early years
television, like radio, was considered a facilitator of the development process
and its introduction was justified by the role it was asked to play in social
and economic development. Television was institutionalized as an arm of the government,
since the government was the chief architect of political, economic and social
development in the country. Doordarshan was set up as an attached office under
the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting--a halfway house between a public
corporation and a government department.
In 1982 television began to
attain national coverage and develop as the government's pre-eminent media
organization. Two events triggered the rapid growth of television that year. INSAT-1A, the first of the country's
domestic Mass Communication Ethics &
Laws
communications satellites
became operational and made possible the networking of all of Doordarshan's
regional stations.
1976 witnessed a significant event in the history of Indian television,
the advent of advertising on Doordarshan. Until that time television had
been funded through a combination of television licenses and allocations from
the annual budget licenses were later abolished as advertising revenues began
to increase substantially. Advertising began in a very small way with under 1%
of Doordarshan's budget coming from advertising revenues in 1976-77. The
commercialization of Doordarshan saw the development of soap operas, situation
comedies, dramas, musical programs, quiz shows and the like. By 1990 Doordarshan's
revenues from advertising were about $300 million, accounting for about 70% of
its annual expenditure.
International satellite television was introduced in India by CNN
through its coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. Three months later Hong Kong
based Star TV now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. started broadcasting fiv
e channels into India using the ASIASAT-1 satellite. By early 1992, nearly half
a million Indian households were receiving Star TV telecasts. Taking advantage
of the growth of the satellite television audience, a number of Indian
satellite based television services were launched between 1991 and 1994,
prominent among them Zee TV, the first
Hindi satellite channel. By the end of 1994 there were 12 satellite-based
channels available in India, all of them using a handful of different
satellites. This number was expected to double by the end of 1996.
Despite the rapid growth of
television channels from 1991 to 1996, television programming continues to be
dominated by the Indian film industry. Hindi films are the staple of most
national channels and regional channels rely heavily on a mix of Hindi and
regional language films to attract audiences. One of Doordarshan's most popular
programs, Chitrahaar, is a
compilation of old film songs and all the private channels, including Zee TV
and music video channels like MTV Asia and Channel V, show some variation of Chitrahaar. A number of game shows are
also based on movie themes. Other genres like soap operas, talk shows and
situation comedies are also gaining in popularity, but the production of these
programs has been unable to keep up with demand, hence the continuing reliance
on film based programming.
International satellite programming has opened up competition in news and public affairs programming with BBC and CNN International challenging Doordarshan's.
long-standing monopoly. Most
of the other foreign broadcasters, for example, ESPN and the Discovery Channel,
are focusing on special interest programming.
A peculiar development in
television programming in India has been the use of hybrid English-Hindi program
formats, popularly called "Hinglish" formats, which offer programs in
Hindi and English on the same channel and even have programs, including news
shows that use both languages within a single telecast. This takes advantage of
the audience for television esp ecially the audience for satellite television,
which is largely composed of middle class Indians who have some knowledge of
English along with Hindi.
A huge industry by itself, the
Indian silver screen has thousands of programmes in all the states of India.
The small screen has produced numerous celebrities of their own kind some even
attaining national fame.TV soaps are extremely popular with housewives as well
as working women. Some small time actors have made it big in Bollywood.
Public
television in India has the following social objectives:
1.
To act as a catalyst for social change
2.
To promote national integration
3.
To stimulate a scientific temper in the minds of the
people
4.
To disseminate the message of family planning as a
means of population control and family welfare
5.
To provide essential information and knowledge in order
to stimulate greater agricultural production
6.
To promote and help preserve environmental and
ecological balance
7.
To highlight the need for social welfare measures
including welfare of women, children and the less privileged
8.
To promote interest in games and sports,
9.
To create values of appraisal of art and our cultural
heritage.
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