New Delhi: India may be upset over the British Broadcasting Corporation not heeding to its request for not airing the Nirbhaya documentary. Nevertheless, the Narendra Modi government seems to be impressed with the professional character of the BBC, and is seeking to model the local state news channel after the British organisation.
The re-modeling of DD News is coming as part of a project for which the government last year sanctioned Rs 430 crore. Prasar Bharati, which Doordarshan and the All India Radio, will use the funds to modernise and make the state media more professional. It has so far received Rs 26 crore.
While DD National has been relaunched with a new look and feel as desh ka apna channel (the country’s own channel), DD News is undergoing the makeover.
It has adopted a new logo with the caption, ‘Only News, Complete News’, and plans to recruit experienced journalists. Ministers and senior bureaucrats are asked to come on DD News first to comment on major issues to guarantee exclusivity, and lift its profile in India’s crowded TV news market. But something that will still be missing is operational autonomy, which is one area where the government isn’t in a hurry to replicate the BBC.
“Compared to Indian channels, we have kept it clutter free. It is patterned on Al Jazeera, BBC News and others,” said Akshay Rout, Doordarshan’s additional director-general for news. The montage, music, graphics, colours and visual patterns have all been changed to improve the watchability, he said. He didn’t speak on operational autonomy.
According to people in the know, ministers have been asked to give regular interviews to DD News. Last week, the channel telecast interviews with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu after their budget speeches, and showed the talkathon of the finance minister as it happened at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
DD News will broadcast regular shows on the Prime Minister’s pet projects like Make in India, Swachh Bharat and Beti Bachao, and have programmes on women’s empowerment and farmers.
“These programmes will not be campaign-driven, but information-centric to tell people how these schemes will benefit them,” Rout said. For instance, there are programmes telling people how the Budget proposals help them.
In the recent past, Doordarshan has faced criticism for some embarrassing errors, such as when a newsreader wrongly pronounced the name of Chinese President Xi Jinping. “But we have initiated error-free production and telecast now. There is stock being taken after every show,” Rout said.
For the first time, it has initiated “rationalisation of Doordarshan staff “, under which everyone is being evaluated and graded on performance consistency.
In another first for DD News, the channel has advertised vacancies for journalists and interviews are scheduled to commence in the coming weeks.
Salaries will be about 30% more than DD’s existing pay scales. “We are looking at recruiting talented broadcast journalists,” Rout said. “We have also identified people who have been working well consistently and those who have not. We may have to let go of some people in the process.”
