Arun Jaitley wants to bring back the glory days of Doordarshan

Thirty years ago Doordarshan DD laid the foundation of Indian television entertainment and ruled air waves with memorable serials like Hum Log Buniyaad Fauji and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharat With the advent of satellite television in the late 90s which spawned 100 channels and more and soaps in Hindi and other languages DD was relegated to the background But with the Narendra Modi governmentrsquos increasing emphasis on staterun media a revamp seems to be in order for the public broadcasterIn pictures Shows from Indian televisions golden eraAlok Nath and Kiran JunejaSippy in Buniyaad one of the first modern Indian family shows that ran from 1984 to 1986 on DoordarshanOn November 12 newlyappointed minister for information and broadcasting Arun Jaitley met some top notch TV producers seeking their support for creating content for Doordarshan About a dozen production houses were earmarked by his ministry and called for the meeting Some of the big names that participated in the meet included JD Majithia Kalyan Guha Sanjoy Wadhwa Abhimanyu Singh Nikhil Alva and BP SinghDoordarshan ruled the air waves back in the 80s and early 90s with several popular programmes that kept the audience glued to their TV sets Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan started his acting career with Fauji above which was telecast on DDA source says ldquoJaitley chaired the meeting and wanted to know why all the big producers have stayed away from Doordarshan Most of them work for general entertainment channels GECs and they put forth their reasons He also spoke about intellectual property rights IPR sharing by the producers who work with DD besides touching upon the amendment of the Indian Copyright Act and quality programming which would focus on family content and give out a social messagerdquoThe minister is also believed to have said that his ministry would work on improving the technology in reaching out to the audience at a lesser costOther hugely popular serials included Hum Log Buniyaad and epics like Ramayana above and Mahabharat bottom Doordarshanrsquos reign ended when satellite television stormed our drawing roomsMajithia who attended the meeting says ldquoIt is encouraging to note that the ministry wants to bring back the glorious days of Doordarshan and has asked for our participation in the processrdquoTalking about the reasons for keeping away from creating programmes for DD the producer says ldquoBudget is a big issue There is also an ambiguity over the date of submission of pilot episodes for the clearance of a show for Doordarshan But the minister has promised to increase the budget and bring in more transparency Further in case of an extension of a serial DD used to sanction 13 weeks which is now planned to be increased to 26 weeksrdquoProducer Manish Goswami expressed dissatisfaction over the present system of DD ldquoAs per its new policy it has started working on the Revenue Sharing Model RSM whereby the producer gives DD a fixed opportunity cost and bears the production cost of the programme In return he gets 240 to 300 seconds for free sale of advertisements to market his programme that too after consultation with DD The IPR is also the property of DD so itrsquos a winwin situation for the channel therersquos no benefit to the producerrdquo he explainsGoswami adds that RSM was difficult to work around and must be amended ldquoThe best way to work is to commission shows with a better budget if they want to improve the quality of showsrdquo he suggestsKalyan Guha who produces Uttaran shares his reasons for those of his ilk not being active on DD ldquoThey have now started new schemes for commissioned programming and it is being displayed on the website The ministryrsquos proposal to restore the lost glory of Doordarshan is definitely a good sign for us as we will get another platform to work on Of course for DD the parameters are different from those of GECs as it has to be more about content enrichment and include a social message We will be more than happy to work with DDrdquo he says