New Delhi : Prasar Bharti Board meeting held yesterday has favoured outsourcing time bands of Doordarshan to improve the quality of the content of programmes on national broadcaster and discussed in detail a recent CAT order on the vexed issue of promotions in the statutory autonomous body.
The 130th meeting of the Board was attended by three of the four newly-appointed part-time members including Ashok Tandon, media advisor to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, singer Anup Jalota and businessman Sunil Alagh.
The meeting saw a vigorous discussion on the issue of outsourcing of time bands, an issue which was taken up in last board meeting as well. Some of the programmes like telesaop ‘Buniyad’ and the phenomenal ‘Ramayana’ were outsourced in past and they were phenomenal success.
“In the past, outsourcing programmes was a big hit. Now instead of outsourcing programmes, there is an agreement on outsourcing time bands. The proposal how to outsource the time bands was discussed in detail in the board meeting today,” a source said.
The board had earlier also decided in principle to outsource various slots in Doordarshan to private parties to enhance quality and monetization in the media and entertainment (M&E) sector. The details of the proposal is being worked out by the Prasar Bharti Board and would be finalised soon, the sources said.
It was for the first time that three of the four part-time appointees to the board attended the meeting. The names of these four persons as part-time members to the Prasar Bharti Board were cleared recently by a three-member committee headed by Vice President M Hamid Ansari.
There were four vacant positions of part-time members of Prasar Bharti Board, I&B min had prepared a panel of around a dozen eminent names from which four persons were chosen by the committee. As per the Prasar Bharati Act, the public broadcaster should have six-part time members on its Board which is headed by its chairman.
The I&B ministry had earlier forwarded a list of a dozen names including that of Bollywood actor Kajol, former editor of ‘Organiser’ Seshadri Chari among others.
