Does Doordarshan matter?

The state-controlled broadcaster is the whipping boy for politicians. But most forget their worry about its 'freedom' once they are in power

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar  May 13, 2014 Last Updated at 21:46 IST

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/vanita-kohli-khandekar-does-doordarshan-matter-114051301506_1.html

Source: business-standard

In the next few days Narendra Modi will probably become the prime minister of India. If he does, here is hoping he remembers the ruckus he and his party raised last week over an interview with him, that was allegedly selectively edited by Doordarshan (DD). Modi referred to DD's struggle to maintain its freedom. The Minister for Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Manish Tewari retorted that the government keeps an arm's length distance from Doordarshan. (See "How do you solve a problem like DD?" Business Standard, May 10, 2014)

Much of this is familiar territory. The state-controlled broadcaster is the whipping boy for politicians of every hue, especially when they are not in power. But most forget their worry about the "freedom of Doordarshan" once they are in power. The result of successive governments ignoring, abusing or suppressing the power of the Rs 1,553-crore Prasar Bharati Corporation, which runs Doordarshan and All India Radio, has made it the pathetic body it is today.

Compare it, for example, to the Zee Group with its assets across broadcasting, cable and direct-to-home (DTH). Zee does more than four times the revenues of Prasar Bharati at one-fourth the employee strength.

You could argue that Doordarshan is a public-service broadcaster. It has to do things that private broadcasters don't. For example, in Manipur, a state with a population of 2.7 million, DD broadcasts in 30 languages every day. To that, one could say DD is a very well-funded and pampered public-service broadcaster, not a poor one. It gets mandatory carriage on all cable and DTH systems, mandatory sports feeds from private broadcasters and anywhere between Rs 1,200 crore and Rs 1,500 crore in subsidies every year.

But what it delivers after all of this is not even remotely close to, say, BBC, another public-service broadcaster funded by the British taxpayer. The BBC has got viewers in the UK used to very high standards of programming in both news and entertainment. As a result, private broadcasters in the UK are in a tough position. They have to match the high benchmark or move out. BBC rules the roost in a fiercely competitive and tightly regulated market. Digital terrestrial television, of which BBC is a big part, gets 44 per cent of all TV viewing in the UK.

What stops Doordarshan, which has the same not-for-profit funding model, from doing a BBC or an Al Jazeera and making Indian taxpayers proud of having funded it? Lots of things.

Prasar Bharati is one of the most asset-rich media firms in the Rs 42,000-crore Indian television industry. But it cannot sell them to raise money without approval from the I&B ministry. It does not even own its assets - 1,400 transmission towers, lots of spectrum and real estate - because no government ever transferred them to Prasar Bharati after the Act creating it was passed in 1997. Nor is it allowed to hire or fire people under the Prasar Bharati Act.

This weird relationship, then, has created a monster that employs 31,621 people who churn out 33 channels, which nobody seems to be watching. Over the last decade, DD has lost its viewership, even in rural areas to basic cable or to free DTH, sold, ironically enough, by DD. There are now only 10 million only-DD or terrestrial homes out of 153 million TV homes. The rest of the 143 million get DD, but rarely watch it. So while everyone has been shouting themselves hoarse about DD's autonomy, shouldn't the question be, does DD matter?

Many of the reasons are listed in the Sam Pitroda Committee's report on Prasar Bharati, submitted earlier this year. Prasar Bharati invests less than 15 per cent of its expenditure every year on content compared to the 60 to 70 per cent for global public-service broadcasters or 40 to 50 per cent for private broadcasters in India. It is obnoxiously overstaffed with the wrong people. Almost 45 per cent of its staff is in the engineering department, which dominates thinking and strategy, followed by 37 per cent in administrative support services. Only 19 per cent of the staff is in programming. Eighty per cent of its content is, therefore, outsourced.

The report offers the obvious solutions to get Prasar Bharati out of its funk. Among these is delinking it administratively and financially from the government, deciding once and for all what it should be - a strong competitor to private broadcasters in the world's second-largest television market or a world-class public service broadcaster. It argues for autonomy, which it hopes will make DD relevant again.

The Pitroda report is the fourth of its kind in just over a decade. All the earlier reports were studiously ignored. It will be interesting to watch if the new government will walk the talk and implement the report's recommendations. Or, will we see another committee offering the same solutions to the same problems, while DD disintegrates further.