Doordarshan misses Games bus

India's national broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) may have dedicated four channels to the Commonwealth Games 2010 but people have been able to watch sporting events only on two channels.

Updated on: Oct 9, 2010, 01:32:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan

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India's national broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) may have dedicated four channels to the Commonwealth Games 2010 but people have been able to watch sporting events only on two channels.

The other two are available neither on the cable television network nor on Direct To Home (DTH) services.

While DD National and DD Sports channels are dedicated to cover participation of the Indian contingent in the Games, DD Urdu and DD Bharati are to telecast major sporting events, irrespective of the countries participating in them.

As per law, cable and DTH operators are required to show two DD channels on the prime band, otherwise their broadcast can be debarred under the Cable Television (Regulation) Act.

Therefore, service providers are showing only DD National and DD Sports channels, which are telecasting the same footage. "We are under no obligation to show all the DD channels," said a multi-service operator in the Capital, on condition of anonymity. That is the reason why DD Bharati and DD Urdu are not available on your television sets.

Moreover, DD failed to inform operators beforehand about the channels on which Games events would be shown.

One game that has totally gone missing from DD's coverage is Rugby. "We have tried to cover all sports," said a DD official, giving the example of Net Ball and Lawns Ball, in which India had participated. "As India has such a huge contingent, it is not possible to show sports in which we (India) have not performed well," the official added.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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